Brick and Mortar
09.02.07By Derek DahlsadOn the way home from the post office, I cut The Wifey off in mid sentence: “Look!” I gesture wildly, probably swerving slightly on Roberts Street. “Bricks!” The Idlekope building has sat on that corner since 1914 –
it’s the one with the billboards in this movie I own — and it’s been one bookstore or another as long as I can remember. The landlord benefiting from revitalization tax breaks, the bookstore was evicted for renovation so the first North Dakota upscale jogging supply store (yes, really) could move in. The first-floor windows visible in the movie had been bricked over since the 1950s, but they are now open to the outside again. Some scrap bricks were piled on the south side of the building, near the train tracks.
Wifey gave me a look. She knew my intention was to go down there, after dark, and take a brick or two…and she’ll most likely be recruited to help. My most favorite building in Fargo, the one I worked in for 5 years, has been receiving renovations as well. One or two nights after the steam-heat power plant was knocked down, Wifey and I snuck down and grabbed two bricks that had fallen into the alley (no jumping of fences required) and brought them home so I could possess a little part of the building.
Thus starts my historical brick collection. As it turns out, I’m not the only one who finds history in bricks collectible and desirable. Numerous museums and private collectors have brick collections, many revolving around the historical aspect of the building material.
Brick has been a common building material for hundreds — thousands — of years, the result of high-temperature curing of clay or other stoneware medium. Enough bricks to build a downtown building weigh several tons…which, in the early-twentieth-century time that Idelkope commissioned this building, was a cumbersome product that could be ordered from a distant company, but much more cost-effective obtained locally. Brickmaking was a regional industry in nearly every community, and brickmakers teetered on the border between basic manufacturing and artisan trade. Each area’s bricks 
had a quality of their own due to the home-grown materials and the composition mixed into the clay to produce a strong, hard brick.
What collectors desire, of course, is the ’stamp’ of the brickmaker’s company. Placed on a hidden face of the brick, the stamp both advertised the company, but also gave a different surface for the mortar to bind to. Collectors, like Dan Mosier’s thorough collection of California bricks, revolve around a certain state or region’s brick manufacturer. Frank and Jane Clement’s collection starts in New York state, but spreads to rare and obscure bricks, such as Abe Lincoln bricks and bricks made by slave labor. While some brickmaker’s wares, like Purington Pavers, traveled far and wide, most bricks didn’t wander far. These bricks are often found in recent demolition sites, like the unmarked bricks I picked up here in Fargo. A lot of bricks don’t survive demolition, but the sheer number means many should separate from the mortar without cracking. Brick material is extremely strong, lasting hundreds of years without fail, and often survives a collapsing wall. As you might guess, storage seems to be the most serious aspect of their collection. Take a book or record album collection (two of the heaviest and largest collections I know of), and scale each item up to 8″ long and ten pounds each. However, if bricks are your passion, I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it work…little stops a dedicated collector.
I’ll probably continue borrowing Downtown Fargo a couple bricks at a time. I doubt I’ll ever have enough to build anything, but it gives me something more than a postcard or photo to own part of our local historic buildings that have been pulled apart for renovation or burned down for no good reason. Each collection has a life of its own; mine involves sneaking in the dark, looking for cast-offs. You collect things your way, I’ll stick with mine.
