Look Back: Brickmaker modernizes

(Look Back with Bob Enoch - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)
A LARGE PLANT
Equipped With Latest Improved Machinery. An Industry that Should be Encouraged.
Those who have never seen a brick making plant in operation should visit that of the Stewart Brick Co. at the foot of 12th Street.
It is an interesting sight and the visitors will be surprised at the extensive scale on which the works are carried on.
The old system of making brick by hand and burning them with wood fires has given way to the march of modern improvement. Machinery is now used in every department and the capacity of the plant is about trebled.
The plant of the Stewart Brick Co. covers over 20 acres of ground and gives employment to about 50 men. The capacity of the plant is about 30,000 building brick and 20,000 paving blocks per day. The latter is a new industry here, new machinery having been put for this purpose only recently. The clay used at the plant is pronounced by brickmakers every where to be the very best in the country, for paving and building purposes. It is dug from the bank about 300 yards from the plant and is brought up an inclined plane on tram cars and dumped in front of the brick making machine. This machine is known as the Frey Eckler Acme machine. The clay is shoveled into a compartment where it is ground and pulverized and then it is carried to a compressor where it is formed into paving blocks and bricks and forced through two apertures, where they are cut the required length by an ingenious arrangement by a boy. The green brick are then loaded on small trucks and conveyed to the dry house which is heated by gas and has a capacity of 32,000 blocks and 48,000 bricks per day, and are also carried to the yards where they are allowed to dry in the sun.
At the plant a large kiln of bricks, just burned, has been opened, one is now being burned, and one is being made ready. The latter is of paving blocks.
Natural gas is now used for burning brick, and in fact it is used in every portion of the plant where fires are needed. It is claimed that with gas the brick are more evenly burned and of a better color than by the old system.
The plant is operated by a 60 horse power Greenwald engine.
In the recent test of paving brick ordered by the paving committee of council, the brick made by the Stewart Brick Co., was the very best of all with one exception, yet in view of this, we understand, the paving committee will recommend the adoption of brick manufactured by foreign [out of the area] parties, whose brick were shown in the test to be much inferior to the home brick.
This is doing an injustice to the home people, and will send the largest part of appropriation for paving out of town.
When one of our townspeople went to Nelsonville [Ohio] recently to bid for sewage work the officials of the town told him it was hardly worth while putting his bid in as they proposed to give the work to their home people. Another Parkersburger had the same experience in another town.
The appropriation of $65,000 for city improvements, was voted on with the understanding that it was to furnish work for our own people and relieve the distress existing at this time, and if the material can be procured here none of this appropriation should be allowed to go out of town.
The [Parkersburg] Daily Sentinel
June 7, 1894
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Bob Enoch is president of the Wood County Historical and Preservation Society. If you have comments or questions about Look Back items, please contact him at: roberteenoch@gmail.com, or by mail at WCHPS, PO Box 565, Parkersburg, WV 26102.