Andy van der Poel, left, of Kingston and Fred Rieck of Elizaville have been searching for bricks together for a year. Purchase a copy of this photo.

The men are brick collectors, and they say the area is the perfect place to pursue such a hobby because hundreds of brick-making factories existed here from the late 1700s to the 1940s. Locally, the list is extensive, ranging far beyond one of the best known companies, Hutton.

"If you look at photos from the early 1800s, it's just brickyards and ice houses," Rieck said. "They were sort of symbiotic in their relationship."

"The clay deposits were here," van der Poel added, "and easy access to New York City with the barges."

Van der Poel, a physics teacher at Saugerties High School, said it's unlikely he would have taken up "bricking," as collectors call it, in his 20s. But at 43, he said the historic aspect resonated with him. He had procured a copy of "Within These Gates," by Daniel de Noyelles, and discovered a chapter that lead to related discoveries.

"I read a lot about the Hudson River," he said. "Then when I read this book, that's what got me going, page 111, Ulster County. It shows all the local brickyards. Upon reading this, I said (to my daughter) 'Hey, let's go find some bricks,' and we did. Then I was hooked."

The first brick the duo discovered, he said, was from the N.E. Turner company, but it simply says "Turner." That one was found at Port Ewen Beach, and the next, from the former Hutton brickyard was discovered across the way, along Rondout Creek. A third, labeled "UF&JTW," they found along the Hudson River at the Robert Post Park in the town of Ulster.

"It's kind of a treasure-hunt," said van der Poel's 12-year-old daughter, Molly. "You don't know what you will find. You have a goal.... Sometimes you find what you're looking for, and sometimes you don't."

"There's no age limit to this thing, believe me," said Rieck, a 67-year-old retired inspector from the state's office of general services.

His interest began even earlier than Molly's. As a youngster of about first-grade level, he noticed the bricks on land near his home and at his aunt's and their marked surfaces.

"I always wondered, 'What did these letters mean?'" he said.

Then, in the late 1950s, a job building a brick patio with a man whose knowledge of local bricks was vast, renewed his interest. Eventually Rieck ran out of experts and set about becoming one himself. He poured over old city directories, microfilm and microfiche, searching for names and locations of brickyards. His quest worked. Today his collection of two decades includes about 2,000 bricks.

They are stored in palettes in his basement, and two less-weighty but thick photo albums contain images of each. Van der Poel, who has accumulated about 200 bricks in close to two years, also stores his collection in the basement of the family home. But instead of palettes, wooden frames he built display them in tall columns of relatively short rows. He can even tell visitors the best viewing area, where sunlight hits the bricks just right to show off the definition of their letters and individual earth tones.

"I have a friend who's an art teacher," van der Poel said. "He said, 'Andy, You ought to paint this black. That would make the bricks pop out even more.'"

A couple of van der Poel's neighbors, brothers who once lived in Glasco, come by to admire the display now and then, he said. Another gentleman who lives nearby also took great interest in his collection. The man had worked at a brick yard at Dennings Point, in Beacon, and he spied a representative brick from that location.

"He said, 'I could have made that brick,'" van der Poel recalled.

But not everyone finds such collections intriguing, at least not at first, Rieck said.

"Yeah, but they get interested pretty quickly," he said, "except my wife."

The Web site www.brickcollecting.com says, "Some call it a crazy hobby but to find, touch and own a piece of history can be very rewarding ... and fun."

Van der Poel, and Rieck, whose comments about brick yards can be found on the site, would agree about the latter part of the comment. It's an activity in which they have participated together up to 10 times since they were introduced by the collecting site's web master, Don Bayley, of Riverdale.

Brick-collecting doesn't rank, in numbers, with top hobbies like reading, watching TV, spending time with family and gardening. If every collector shows as much enthusiasm as Rieck and van der Poel, its likely to grow in ranks. There already is an International Brick Collectors Association, and it cites a membership of 1,000, half reportedly active.

Rieck and van der Poel definitely belong to the latter group. On a trip together to George's Island in Westchester, in fact, van der Poel found one of his favorite bricks, with the letters ESBCo, which stand for the East Shore Brick Company.

"We nailed that one," Rieck said.

Others van der Poel gives high ranking are from the North River Brick Company, found at Ulster Landing in the town of Ulster; the Hudson River Brick Company, found in Haverstraw; and the Kingston Brick and Ice Company, discovered south of St. George's Beach at the Ulster County Park.

Among bricks of interest in Rieck's collection is one with "DK" in the center flanked by a star on either side. He found it in a Hudson brickyard, but he does not know the company who made it.

"This is a mystery brick," he said.

Another that appears less of a mystery, is nevertheless a point of speculation. It says "blob L blob," Rieck said, referring to letters that appear to have been shaved off on either side of the "L." He speculates that bricks formerly labeled "GLT" for manufacturer Greg L. Tobin, retained only the "L" after the company was purchased by a man whose surname was Lane. Rieck figures the brick mold was simply altered. A hint of the "T," however, remains on the example he was describing.

Another brick, manufactured by a company that once ran yards in Newton Hook, Albany and Cahoes, sports the letters "CARY," with a central image that looks much like the end of a clothesline pulley, a symbol for the Common Brick Manufacturer's Association. Much like the reformulated "GLT" bricks, certain of these have a circular raised area where the symbol once was.

"That's pretty cool. I wonder what prompted this," Rieck said. "Maybe the company did not pay its dues, or maybe the association went bust. It's (another) case of where they were re-treading the mold."

The only downside to their hobby, the friends said, is the prevalence of ticks in the areas they search for bricks. Three weeks ago Rieck found one on himself and a friend, along on the trip, discovered two.

Regarding legalities of brick-hunting, the men said they are careful to follow the rules. They do not search on private land or other places where collecting is unauthorized.

"As I understand it," van der Poel said, "the state owns to the high-tide mark, and these are found in the tidal wash area. You go at low tide so there is as much of that exposed as possible."

But their interest doesn't stop along Hudson's shore, a fact that rattled a demolition contractor in charge of dealing with a Schenectady home destroyed by fire. When Rieck, dressed in a business suit, approached, the wary man immediately answered an unasked question.

"He said, 'Yeah, I got all the permits.'

"I said, 'I just want to know what brand of brick was in the chimney.'"

Thanks to numerous brick-making companies of the past, Rieck, van der Poel and anyone interested should have many years of fun taking part in bricking or 'industrial archeology,' as Rieck puts it.

"In 1905, it seems like all hell broke out in this business," which van der Poel referred to as the IBM of the 1800s.

"Everybody thought they could make a buck from it," Rieck said, "and they all got into it."