WASHINGTON BRICKS

American Fire Brick Company

Letterhead of the Amercian Fire Brick Company.

History

The American Fire Brick Company was born out of an earlier venture that began in 1893, when the Oudin & Bergman Fire Clay Mining & Manufacturing Company was established in Spokane, Washington. The two principals, Charles P. Oudin and Martin L. Bergman, erected a plant on Perry Street in Spokane with the purpose of manufacturing equipment for the clay and brick industry. However, the plant ended up making bricks. Disagreement between Oudin and Bergman over who owned the plant resulted in a long court battle that lasted ten years. The partnership split up to form their own brick companies. In April 1903, the court awarded Oudin ownership of the company and plant. In December 1904, the Oudin-Bergman pottery was destroyed by fire, resulting in a loss of $15,000.

At Mica, 10 miles southeast of Spokane, in Spokane County, Washington, Charles P. Oudin had found refractory and red-burning clays over decomposed bedrock of granite, gneiss, schist, and basalt. When the Oudin-Bergman plant at Spokane was destroyed by fire, it was announced that the plant would be rebuilt at Mica. In April 1904, Oudin began building the new plant, which was completed in three months with two kilns.

The American Fire Brick Company was organized in 1903, and it was said to be financed by New York capitalists. Charles P. Oudin was the president and general manager and E. E. Saunders was the secretary and treasurer. The office was at 610 Empire State Building at the corner of Riverside Avenue and Lincoln Street in Spokane.

The clays mined at Mica are in residual deposits that have been washed downslope from their source areas and occur as horizontal alternating layers of pure kaolinite and sandy micaceous clay. These clays were derived from granite and metamorphic rocks. Overlying these clays are layers of yellow and red clays of basaltic origin, ranging from one to 20 feet thick, that had to be removed to reach the higher quality clays below. The high quality clays have desirable refractory and vitrified properties. Three types of clays were recognized. One was a coarsed grained clay with considerable amounts of quartz and muscovite disseminations. The second clay was finer grained and nearly white with considerable small flakes of muscovite disseminations. It was very plastic and sticky, and it was considered to be a No. 2 refractory grade clay for moderate temperature uses. The third clay is similar to the second clay, but has a grayish color. These clays were mixed in specific proportions to create the various wares.

View of the clay bank. Clay Worker, 1910.

The largest clay bank was 500 feet long and 35 feet high. The clay was loaded into cars and conveyed by gravity on tracks to the plant. The fire clay plant was a half mile north of the plant and, in 1909, clay was hauled by wagons to the plant.

The plant contained of a 12-foot pug mill for grindng and tempering the clay. A bucket elevator conveyed the ground clay to the upper floor of the building where it was screened and stored for use.

View of the Amercian Fire Brick Company plant. Shedd, 1910.

The sewer pipe department was in a large three-story building, 140 by 160 feet, built in 1906. It contained a nine-foot Stevens dry pan and an eight-foot Stevens wet pan. It had a large Stevenson sewer pipe press, 40 by 52 inches, with 20-inch mud cylinder, all mounted on iron frame. This was used to make the large sewer pipe. It also had a Turner, Vaugh and Taylor sewer pipe press, which had a 44-inch stroke and 20 tons pressure. Capacity was 5,000 pieces of 4-inch pipe per ten hours. This was for making smaller sewer pipe, drain tile, conduits, and walk coping. Steam pipes were laid beneath the floors for drying the wares.

View of the Amercian Fire Brick Company plant. Clay Worker, 1910.

The brick department was in a smaller building made of hollow tile and sheet iron built in 1904. It contained a nine-foot Stevens dry pan, an American auger stiff mud brick machine, with an automatic wire-cutting table, which had a capacity of 50,000 brick a day; a Richardson repress brick machine, with a capacity of 20,000 brick per ten hours, for making pressed brick; and one four-mold Berg dry press brick machine for making face brick. Before 1910, the pallet system was used for drying the bricks in the drying room. It required five to seven days to properly dry the bricks. By 1911, the bricks were dried in a ten-tunnel King direct dryer equipped with 250 cars.

View of the paving brick plant and square test kiln. Clay Worker, 1910.

Located between the two buildings was the power plant. Before 1910, this plant consisted of a 125-horse power Buckeye rapid motion engine and two 80-horse power boilers. By 1911, these were replace with a large Twin City Corliss engine of 425-horse power and two 150-horse power high pressure boilers.

View of the clay storage shed. Clay Worker, 1910.

The brick and pipes were fired in eight round down-draft kilns, ranging in size from 20 to 30 feet in diameter. There was also a small square test kiln. Wood was replaced by coal to fire the kilns. The plant employed 95 when running full time.

View of a down-draft kiln. Clay Worker, 1910.

This plant manufactured firebrick, building brick, special white brick, sidewalk tile, sewer pipe of various sizes, and licensed hollow tile from Dennison and Heath. A Fate combination tile machine and table was used for making the interlocking hollow tile. Paving brick was experimented with but not successfully made. In 1917, magnesite brick and ferro magnesite were made.

Startup for this plant got off to a slow start. Among the first brick shipments made was for 1.5 million hard bricks for paving and gutter brick in the Browne's Addition in Spokane in July 1910. The company could not supply the quantity required in time, so some of the bricks were acquired from the Denny-Renton Clay & Coal Company. Then in 1911, 20 workers at the plant struck over wages. In 1915, 125 carloads of bricks were sent to the Walla Walla Hospital for $23,000. In 1917, firebricks for three kilns were shipped to the American Mineral Products Company west of Colville.

In September 1929, a California-based pottery manufacturer, Gladding, McBean and Company, purchased the American Fire Clay brick plant for about $250,000. Gladding, McBean and Company wanted to extend its northern marketing territory into eastern Washington and reduce shipping costs of its ceramic wares.

American Fire Brick Company Bricks

References

A Clayworking Plant of the Inland Empire, Clay Worker, v. 56, no. 6, December 1911, p. 634-635.

Brick, v. 18, no. 4, April 1903, p. 191.

Brick, v. 20, no. 1, January 1904, p. 3.

Brick, v. 25, no. 1, July 1906, p. 36.

Claim the Brick is Inferior, Spokane Press, July 30, 1910, p. 1.

Clay Worker, v. 41, no. 1, January 1904, p. 117, 120.

Clay Worker, v. 45, no. 6, June 1906, p. 896.

Colfax Gazette, December 17, 1909, p. 4.

Fire Brick Makers Out, East Oregonian, July 28, 1911, p. 2.

Gladding, McBean Buys American Fire Brick, Brick and Clay Record, v. 75, no. 9, 1929, p. 570.

Gladding Buys Spokane Plant, Oakland Tribune, September 30, 1929, p. 27.

Leavenworth Echo, June 29, 1917, p. 3.

Leavenworth Echo, October 1, 1915, p. 6.

Magnesite Shipping, Colville Examiner, March 24, 1917, p. 3.

McWatters, Mike, written correspondences, 2017.

Shedd, Solon, The Clays of the State of Washington, State College of Washington, Pullman, Washington, June 1910.

Spokane City Directory, 1903.

Tinsley, Jesse, Spokane Then and Now: Mica Brickyard, The Spokesman-Review, May 1, 2017, accessed 7 November 2017, http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/may/01/mica-brickyard/#/0.

WASHINGTON BRICKS

American Fire Brick Company

History

American Fire Brick Company Bricks

American Firebrick

Pressed Brick

Paving Brick

References

Contact Dan Mosier at danmosier@earthlink.net.