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New Information and Updated Pages, July 15, 2008:

A new "Forum" format for our Visitors' Comments/Collections/Brix Pix Page.
Andy van der Poel and Fred Rieck, two Hudson Valley collectors
      and BrickCollecting.com "regulars" are In the News!
See Andy's Collection Here
Read Fred's comments Here
Brick Collecting T-Shirts, Mugs, etc. (sorry but we just couldn't resist!)
Backwards Branding
Verplanck, NY
OB&V (O'Brien & Vaughey)
First-hand Account: "The Brickyard, Summer of 1957"
Catskill, NY
Aldridge Brick Company

      Collecting old brick is a growing hobby. Some call it a crazy hobby, but to find, touch and own a piece of history can be very rewarding...and fun. This web site has several main sections:

• Brickmaking History: How bricks were made; Inventions, Machines, Patents
• Hudson River Brickmaking: The extent of the industry in New York and northern New Jersey, now with an interactive map version
• Our Collection: Bricks from the Hudson River Valley and New England with brief notes on the history of the yards and towns where they were made
• Visitors' Page: Here you can post comments and questions and, if you have a collection, tell us about it and post pics
• Links: Other web sites with fun and interesting information all about brick(s)
• Brick Collections Around the World: From Russia to New Zealand to Japan, this is truly an international hobby
• The Olde Brick Book Store: Hard-to-find gems of Hudson Valley lore, history and mystery

Recently, we've added some new specialized pages and sections:

• Brick Clicks
• Brick Flick
• BRIGHAM Bros.
• Catskill, NY
  
• Coeymans, NY
  
• Croton, NY
  
• DPBW: Dennings Point Brick Works
  
• Dutchess Junction
  
• East Kingston
• Haverstraw
  
• Histories of Brick Companies Still in Existence
  
• HUTTON Brick Company
  
• Kingston, NY (incl. East Kingston & Whiskey Point)
• MAYONE ("The Gentleman from Ulster," a history of the MAYONE Brick Co. in Athens and Glasco, NY)
• NEBCo: New England Brick Company
  
• ROSE, Roseton, NY
  
• Rosendale Cement
  
• SHULTZ Brick Company
  
• Verplanck, NY (incl. Montrose and Crugers)
  
• W.A.U: Tales from Croton Point (The story of the William A. Underhill Brickyard)
  
• West Barnstable Brick Company, Cape Cod, MA

Dan Mosier has created a fine web site on California Bricks and has a great page all about Collecting Bricks.

For true brickophiles there's the International Brick Collectors Association. IBCA members don't buy bricks, they swap them. They collect all kinds of brick: building brick, paving brick, fire brick, as long as they are branded with names, designs, patterns, pictures, or numbers.

Bricks were produced in many areas around the United States and Canada where craftsmen brought their skills from Europe to places that had the right type of clay suitable for brickmaking and good access to transportation.

One such area, the Hudson River Valley in New York State, with its abundance of clay and an excellent water link to New York City, churned out millions of bricks, mostly near the turn of the 20th century. In Haverstraw, in Rockland County, NY, there is the Haverstraw Brick Museum. In the 1880’s there were over 40 brickyards in the Haverstraw area. Many buildings in New York City are made with bricks manufactured in Haverstraw. For more information on Hudson River Brickmaking, Click Here.

At one time, the state of Connecticut had more than 200 brickmaking companies. As a result of past glaciation periods, many clay deposits dot the state and many of these were exploited to make bricks. The history of brickmaking in the state is explored in a special section of the Connecticut Museum of Mining and Mineral Science.

From the National Building Museum's American Brick Collection:

Brick is one of the oldest and most enduring man-made building materials. Sun-dried mud brick, or adobe, appeared about 10,000 years ago, and the earliest kiln-fired or clay-baked brick dates to 3,500 BC. This marked the first time humans were able to construct permanent, fireproof structures without stone.  Since at least 1611, when English brickmakers were recruited to Virginia, fired brick has been part of the North American landscape. Indelibly tied to the colonial era, brick came to define the nation’s industrial age and remains linked to contemporary notions of the American factory, school, and single-family house. Although once manufactured with incredible variety, brick production today is far more limited because the material is no longer used structurally, but rather as veneer.

A variety of 19th and 20th century brick samples from the National Building Museum Collection, which contains more than 1,800 examples from brickyards around the country

A labor of love, the Museum’s extensive American Brick Collection was amassed by Raymond Chase over 24 years. The collection now holds some 1,800 decorative, face, fire, paving, pressed, and common bricks from around the nation. And unlike the country’s anonymous army of bricklayers, many of these late-19th and early 20th-century brick are branded with the name or location of their originating brickyard, or a distinguishing mark.

We often get asked where old bricks can be found. The best places are former brickyards, construction sites, abandoned building sites, demolition sites, dump sites, land-fill and beaches.

Just a few of the many bricks found by website visitor Jason in the Bronx, NY

Bricks found at demolition site, Pilgrim Psychiatric Center,
998 Crooked Hill Road, West Brentwood, NY, September, 2007

(Thanks to Bill from St. James, NY for tipping us off on this location!)

Bricks found in land-fill (site now closed), Milton, NY, January, 2007

Some collectors build custom shelves to display their brick. Others even have their bricks bound:

I hope you enjoy this web site and would love to hear your comments.
--Don Bayley, Riverdale, NY. (IBCA #1347)

Webmaster Note:
We are offering George Hutton's landmark book, The Great Hudson River Brick Industry at a Special Discount Price for all visitors to brickcollecting.com! George has firsthand experience in brickmaking at the Hutton Company in Kingston, New York. Click Here for Complete Info. And here's a link to our HUTTON Page.

You will also find many new additions to our on-line "Olde Brick Store." Many hard-to-find books on Hudson Valley history and lore are there and some are at special discounts.

For example, Carl Carmer's The Hudson (Rivers of America) is available used in good condition for as low as $1.00. Arthur G. Adams' The Hudson River Guidebook is on sale for as low as $4.40. Here's a direct link to The Olde Brick Store. Happy Bricking in 2008!