It’s in the Walls

Walking up to City Roots coffee shop, I picked out Daniel Strange and John Hicks with little difficulty: two older fellows, sitting slightly apart from everyone else, talking animatedly and conspiratorially—as though they had a secret. I pulled up a chair and asked them if they’d found anything yet. They looked at each other and smiled, then said they couldn’t tell me much—but their sources here were promising. Strange had been up since 2:30 am, sleepless with excitement—“It’s like Christmas Eve!” And on the drive from West Monroe to Baton Rouge, they traveled with eyes peeled. “We were coming down,” said Hicks, “and we saw something in a ditch we passed, a deep ditch north of Baton Rouge. We did a U-turn.

“If you pass it up this time, well you never know if you’ll go down that road again.”

The riches the pair sought could be rare; they could even be valuable. But they are also plainly, invisibly, mundanely everywhere—and to the untrained eye, remarkably fundamental to the point of being unremarkable. “Right when we pulled up here, we started looking at these brick buildings,” said Hicks, gesturing to the 106-year old former power plant that now serves at Baton Rouge’s Electric Depot complex. “They’re all around you. Most people don’t even see them. Just kick them out of the way, throw them through a police car or something.

“But, they’re history. There’s history behind these bricks.”

[Read our story on other varieties of collecting from our February issue here.]

The International Brick Collectors Association (IBCA) was founded in 1983, evolving out of what was first a group of barbed-wire collectors. As Chicago Tribute writer Christopher Borrelli put it in a 2016 article on the subject, “These are fanboys of the prosaic, champions of the everyday.” Today, the group consists of approximately four hundred active members spread across the United States, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and France. Strange is the current treasurer of the group—he and Hicks being two of Louisiana’s four active members, along with Greg Duggan in Natchitoches and Terry Taraba in Stonewall. For ten and a half years, Taraba served as the association’s president, accumulating a collection of seven thousand bricks along the way, which includes representatives from every state in the mainland U.S., over five hundred Mexican bricks, fifty Canadian bricks, and over a hundred more from countries like Lithuania, Vietnam, and Australia.

The hobbyists of the IBCA range from the casual brick admirer to full-on civilian archaeologists, and members of the group have made significant contributions to the collective knowledge of our nation’s brick manufacturing history. Allan Gilbert, for example, is a professor of anthropology and founded the three-thousand-item New Netherland/New York Brick Archive at Fordham University. Frank Clement, known for tracking down old brickyards that once existed along rivers and then jumping into said rivers in search of precious blocks, turned his forty-plus-year 8,500-count collection into the Frank and Jane Clement Brick Museum in Orchard Park, New York. For a time his wife Jane served as president of the association, and Frank as vice president. The group’s current librarian, Jim Graves, has compiled one of the most extensive public brick databases in existence, listing known bricks in the United States and their qualities (brand, type, maker, location) at brickname.com.

“They’re all around you. Most people don’t even see them. Just kick them out of the way, throw them through a police car or something. But, they’re history. There’s history behind these bricks.” –John Hicks

The highlights of IBCA participation, though, are its brickswaps, which typically take place three times a year at various locations around the country. (Because of COVID-19, the group hasn’t had an official swap since September 2019, though they’ve had a couple of unofficial swaps in the meantime.) Early on Saturday morning, the collectors will convene in a designated parking lot, where they will arrange the bricks they are willing to part with behind their vehicles. The blow of a horn announces the swap’s start, and all bets are off. “It’s a bit of a free for all,” said Hicks. Anyone can take what they please. There are, though, a few ways to ensure you get the best of the bunch, explained Strange. “John and I’ve got some good bricks,” he said. “If you put them out on Saturday, anybody can get them, and you might not necessarily get good ones in their place. Both of us are pretty aggressive, so sometimes we’ll do a little pre-swap.” Another strategy is what in the brick fanatic community they call “putting your foot on it.” Basically: Get there early, scope out the goods, and stand on top of the best ones until the swap begins.

The swap system, explained Hicks, keeps the club—and the hobby of brick collecting—accessible to all. “We keep it on level ground that way,” he said. “The rich man’s always going to be able to afford a rare brick, but we want to keep it family friendly, available to everyone.”

“We’re enjoying our retirement,” said Hicks. A de facto “brick chasing” team, he and Strange take trips about once a month to various parts of the Louisiana-Mississippi area. Relying on a network of mysterious “sources,” they hit demolition sites, brickyards, Facebook Marketplace finds, and the occasional home of an old lady with a pile of bricks in her closet—leaving plenty of room to stumble upon a pile in the ditch here or there along the way.

“It’s good,” said Hicks. “We watch each other, keep each other company, share expenses. It’s companionship—more exciting when you have someone to share it with.”

The two have been collecting together for a little over three years. They met through Taraba when Hicks first discovered IBCA. “He called me and came to visit one afternoon,” said Strange. “He brought a bunch of Thurber pavers for my sidewalk project, and took home a bunch of new bricks for his collection.”

“I didn’t know there were other weirdos like me out there,” laughed Hicks, who first started collecting around forty years ago while driving routes for UPS. “I used to see these bricks all over, with names on them,” he said. He started his collection intending to use his finds as a floor in his first home. “Every time my wife and I went on a trip, we’d find them, load the car up, take them back. We’ve got them in our house, in the sidewalks.” Today, though, he keeps his collection in his garage, awaiting the day when he can build it a proper home—a brick barn.

“Susan, my wife, says that once you see my brick barn, you’ll never look at bricks the same,” said Strange. A 36x50’ metal building filled with seven-foot shelves designed precisely for the purpose of displaying his bricks, which are organized alphabetically by state, Strange has got a bonafide brick museum in his backyard in Minden. In fact, at one point, Webster Parish Tourism was even considering including Strange’s house as a stop on tours as part of the 2018 initiative “Destination Webster”.

[Read about Louisiana art collector Larry Ruth here.]

Bricks are in Strange’s blood. His father was a brick layer, and he worked with him all the way through college and graduate school, earning his journeyman’s union card. The first brick he ever purchased was part of a fundraiser at Northwestern State University.

But Strange’s brick collection really got its start on a mission trip in Dewey, Oklahoma in 1987, when a David Ward of Independence, Kansas gifted him seven Kansas bricks. “Kansas has some of the best bricks of all, with an ox and yoke design on them, or a sunflower,” said Strange. “That got me started.”

Today, Strange’s collection is up to around 3,500, and Hicks’ is over 2,000. “I’m a little more picky, since I don’t have a designated place to store my bricks,” said Hicks. “I’m more of a regional collector. I do have some from up North that are interesting, but I’m really looking for this area. I want Deep South, local. There are very few people seeking out this region’s bricks exclusively.”

“Kansas has some of the best bricks of all, with an ox and yoke design on them, or a sunflower,” said Strange. “That got me started.”

The bricks that most collectors focus on are brand bricks: bricks with words or designs on them. Starting around the 1860s and 1870s, brick manufacturers started emblazoning bricks with the name of their family, company, or town as a form of advertising. This trend faded out around the 1940s as the industry became more mechanized and monopolized.

“There are probably only about three major manufacturers left in the United States today,” said Taraba over the phone. “And everything is done automatically, no one touches the brick. So it is becoming harder to find those original hand-made, mud-made bricks with identifiers. Most of the bricks we find with interesting designs or names were made before 1940.”

[Read a snippet about the blue bricks of San Juan, Puerto Rico here.]

Over the past year, Strange and Hicks have found a handful of rare and even never-seen-before bricks that, each on their own, would be the pinnacle of any brick collector’s career. These include a plantation-made “RKG BELLE HELENE” and what appears to be its predecessor, a very similar brick with the letters “BH” inscribed on it. Last year, they found four “JOHNSON CONE”s   in Jackson, Mississippi, and that summer Hicks found “a palace” more of them. “And nobody had seen these up to this point,” emphasized Strange. Hicks has got a “BACOT” from McComb, Missisippi, which upon further research revealed itself to be from the descendants of Pike County’s first sheriff. “As people were coming from Chicago area down the Mississippi, they’d clear forests and use the wood to build houses, and they needed bricks. So they’d start these little family operations. You won’t find this brick in Milwaukee, or even New Orleans. These are so rare. It’s a local brick and it never left the area.” Some of Strange’s favorites include a BREAUX BRIDGE, a CHAPPUIS, and a RAYNE. The Chappuis and Rayne bricks, Hicks and Strange believe, are from the same family. “I got two or three from the Chappuis great granddaughter,” said Strange. “I’ve had five or six and John’s had a few of them. Very sought after.” John found his on a whim, just riding around the area. “I was just riding down country roads in the Rayne area, and I looked to my left. Thunderstorms were coming, and I remember, under a big old Spanish oak tree I saw a pile of bricks. I did a U-turn, went back, and started looking through them. I realized what they were and went weak-kneed.”

“He’s the only person I know who can be driving sixty-five miles an hour and see a brick under a tree while he’s driving by it,” laughed Strange.

They each have their all-time favorites, though. Hicks’ is a heavy, rough, hard tan brick with “D,R, Morgan” hand-carved in script on both the face and the side. “There’s only one of this one,” he said. Strange pointed at it and said, “When John dies, that comes to me.”

Strange’s favorite is more sentimental, and almost as rare: the ELSTAN LITTLE JEWEL. “I had found five at my dad’s place, long after he died,” he said. “He had bricks all over there.” Part of his very early collection, one of the bricks ended up under a serious collector’s foot seconds into Strange’s first swap at Taraba’s house. “I didn’t even know what I had,” he said. To his knowledge, no one has ever found another Elstan Little Jewel.

“[Hicks is] the only person I know who can be driving sixty-five miles an hour and see a brick under a tree while he’s driving by it,” laughed Strange.

“That’s the thrill of this thing,” said Hicks. “It’s the hunt, the needle in the haystack.” These collectors keep their prized jewels close, but they also carry along an inherent spirit of generosity unique to the art of brick collecting. Everywhere they go, Hicks and Strange are not just looking for bricks for their own collections—they are collecting extras; seconds and thirds of their own rare finds to give to their friends. “These are some of the most generous people in the world,” said Hicks, who keeps what he calls a “bone pile” in his back yard, separate from his personal collection. “Good bricks, good traders that other people will want, that I just don’t need,” he explained. “You can use them to swap or to gift other members.” Taraba explained that whenever a new collector attends one of their brickswaps, he always makes a point to send them home with around twenty-five bricks, “and everyone else there does the same thing.”

But, every now and then, Hicks and Strange will find something special, something unearthed with another collector’s name already on it. When a club member named Cecil Poston stopped collecting in 2019 due to health constraints and gave his collection to Hicks and Strange, they went up to Tulsa, OK with a twelve-foot trailer. When they got home, and were going through the pile, they came across one deeply-coveted COMANCHE I.T.. “It’s one of the most sought-after bricks among collectors,” explained Strange. When they saw it, the two men said simultaneously: “Terry.” “Terry had been looking for one for over twenty years,” said Strange. “We called him and asked if he would meet us at Picadilly in Shreveport.” “He was speechless,” said Hicks. “He cried,” nodded Strange. “A seventy-year old man, he cried.” 

internationalbrickcollectorsassociation.com