Welcome to 2010! This web site devoted to historical Minnesota bricks has high hopes for the New Year. How about a peak into the future? We are still planning on adding a graphic from the early 1900s that shows where all the old brickyards were. This is not an all encompassing graphic though, some towns only had brickyards for several years before they closed. The early 1900s graphic only shows brickyards in existence when the graphic was made. So like many things, it has its limitations. However, it is a good piece in the brick-making puzzle.
Information on some of the brief duration brickyards will be harder to find, although we will put up what we come across. Adolph Casimir Ochs' Springfield Brick & Tile Company is the longest running brickyard, and there should be a lot of information available about them. I recently obtained some blueprints for a barn and double ACO silo combination in southern Minnesota. The current owner of the barn was gracious enough to let me make some copies of them. I plan on making these copies and adding them to the web site in the near future. This barn and double silo combination is only the second one I have ever seen, so these barn blueprints are quite rare.
Chaska brick were turned out by the millions, and there are many of these structures still standing today. Some of them are in better shape than others. The Guardian Angels Church in Chaska is one old gem made of Chaska brick. See the Chaska brick section for an article on it, which was written by Mark Olson of the Chaska Herald. Mark has allowed us to share that article with our readers. This article states that donations are needed to help fix the GA Church. If you are able, that is a worthy cause. I also have some photographs of some old Chaska brick farm buildings that I hope to dig out and add, so look forward to that.
The Lake Mary brickyard was only in operation for a limited number of years, but I have photographs of several Lake Mary brick farmhouses around the Winsted, MN, area. I plan on adding those photos to the Lake Mary section. The Shakopee brickyard operated for a number of years, but its bricks were not quite as durable. I do have some pictures of the remains of the Schroeder brickyard in Shakopee, which I will add. There are buildings around the New Ulm, MN, area, which were built of New Ulm brick, and I hope to make a trip there to get some photographs of them.
Otherwise, I plan on slowly adding information on some of the other brickyards around Minnesota. My plan is to add information on sites at Crookston, East Grand Forks, Moorhead, Mankato, and Princeton. These brickyards also turned out millions of bricks at the beginning of the 1900s. I am not sure if any of these brickyards produced a "named" brick, like Chaska, Shakopee, ACO Springfield, Excelsior, and Wrenshall did. If anyone reading this has any idea, we would love to know. So those are some of the New Years plans that the mnbricks.com folks have. Looking forward to a fun year!
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