Historic brickyards:

Abundant supplies of clay-rich loess along the Missouri River helped supply the millions of bricks used to build a growing Cole County.

Beautiful, historic residences and businesses in Jefferson City were built from millions of bricks. Where did they come from? Fortunately, Jefferson City has abundant supplies of clay-rich loess mantling the hills along the Missouri River. Loess is the accumulation from thousands of years of dirt or dust blown out of the Missouri River valley in continental ice sheets, ideal for basic brick-making.

Bricks were made in Jefferson City from its earliest years for specific purposes, like the first state building in 1826. As the city grew, brick-making became a business, mostly in the hands of German immigrants.

Bricks have many colors, styles, qualities and endurances. Most of the bricks used in construction in the 19th century were “soft bricks,” which absorb water and leave whitish efflorescence where the water with dissolved salts from the clay evaporated on the brick surface. Historic soft brick structures usually require chemical treatment or resurfacing with higher grade bricks.

By 1878 and continuing until World War I, three major brick makers dominated the business in Jefferson City. All were located in the clay-rich hillsides near the river.

A state-owned brickyard sat at the foot of Chestnut

Street next to the prison to supply bricks made by convicts for state buildings. In 1896, a Sedalian claimed it unfairly competed with private companies on the open market, but the warden said that allegation was just part of Sedalia’s effort to move the capital there.

Two private brick companies were opposite each other on the sides of the wide mouth of Wears Creek in the Millbottom. The Dulle Brick Company dug its clay loess on the hillside behind the Selinger Center. Its sheds and kilns were near the southwest corner of Broadway and West Main streets where now there is a parking lot.

Dulle supplied 800,000 bricks for building St. Peter Catholic Church next door in 1883. Dulle became the JC Brick Company in 1888, and the names associated with this company are Jacob Tanner, J.B. Bruns, Philip Ott, Henry Kroeger and Charles Opel. Opel, a local architect, likely used bricks from the JC Brick Company in many of his buildings. In 1890 alone, the company made 1 million bricks.

The Pohl family brick company was in the 300 block of Harrison Street and occupied the site of today’s Missouri Transportation Department complex. Clay was dug from the raw hillside holding up Bolivar Street, with roofed

drying sheds, a wood yard and firing kilns in the flat land at the base.

Bernard Pohl, father of 16 children, lived nearby at 712 W. High St. He immigrated from German Emsland of extreme northwest Germany, where his family were peat diggers and brick makers. Pohl bricks were prized for color and durability.

A 19-year-old German immigrant, Josef Zeisberg, worked at the Pohl brick yard 1881-83, and his memoirs provide us a detailed description of living with the large Pohl family and how the brickyard functioned.

Brick-making was seasonal. It began in April and ended by December. Workers had 10-hour days, including night shifts, because kilns’ high temperatures had to be maintained perpetually. Clay was mixed with Missouri River sand, loam and water. The mixture was hand-molded into wooden forms for standard-sized bricks, then stacked inside the kiln in such a way as to allow hot air to circulate around every one. Zeisberg said stacking was the most strenuous work. The kiln was heated with charcoal, also made in the brickyard. In the 1880s, pay ranged from $1.10 per day for wheeling sand to $1.75 for the molders.

Local architect Fred Binder likely used Pohl’s bricks for his buildings, like Central United Church of Christ, the Music Hall and Binder buildings in 200 block of

East High Street, and the early Jefferson City Water Works and Water Tower.

Brick-making was closely tied to the pace of city construction. Newspaper accounts in 1893-94 reported delays in brick supply interfered with project completion. Construction of the Missouri River Bridge was expected to increase building in Jefferson City and raised fears of insufficient supplies of brick. In response, the JC Brick Company added a new dryer, increasing capacity from 30,000 bricks a day to millions a year. Drying no longer would be dependent on sunshine and dry weather. In 1891, 300 men were employed in brick-making, not including convicts at the state brick works.

In addition to buildings, millions of bricks were the first materials to hard-surface streets over a crushed limestone base, and for sidewalks, to replace stepping stones.

After World War I, brick-making in Jefferson City rapidly declined as competition could produce bricks from higher-grade clays, like the kaolin clay of the A.P. Green Refractory in Mexico, Missouri, or Harbison-Walker in Fulton, which could bear the cost of long-distance shipping.

Walter Schroeder grew up in Jefferson City and is a retired professor of geography. He is the author of three books on the history of the Old Munichburg neighborhood.

His most recent work, “The Americanization of Francis Joseph Zeisberg: A German Immigrant’s Life in Jefferson City, Missouri, 1881-1892” will appear in the July 2020 issue of the Missouri Historical Review.