Hidden Brick Company advertisement. From Vancouver City Directory, 1934.
History
View of the Hidden Brick Company brickyard showing a rectangular kiln and plant buildings. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
In 1871, Lowell Mason Hidden established a brickyard at 15th and Main streets in Vancouver, Clark County, Washington. Lowell
Hidden was a native of Craftsbury, Vermont, who came to Vancouver in 1864. It is not known when or how Hidden learned the trade
of brickmaking. He organized the Hidden Brick Company to manufacture hand-made brick. This company operated two brickyard sites
in Vancouver that will be discussed here because the clay and the bricks are similar from both yards.
View of the tractor and scraper mining clay at the Hidden brickyard. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
Hidden used the yellow clay-loam in an alluvial silt deposit for making bricks. This same clay deposit occurs at both of the
Hidden brickyards. The clay deposit ranged from 4 to 10 feet in thickness with no overburden and rests on decomposed gravel.
The clay was reported to be free of pebbles. The clay pit at the second yard was 50 feet wide and 400 feet in length. A plow
was used to expose the clay to weather for a period before it was carried by a scraper to a trap. A conveyor belt carried the
clay from the trap to the plant. Pictures of the brickyard were taken by Karl Gurcke in the summer of 1981 and provides us
with a glimpse into the operation of the Hidden brickyard at that time.
View of the interior of the Hidden brick plant showing the pug mill on the left
and the Henry Martin brick press on the right. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
View of a worker putting an empty brick mold into the
Martin press to be loaded. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
View of a worker striking off the loaded brick mold. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
View of a worker removing the loaded brick mold from the brick press. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
At the plant, the clay was put into a soaking pit and tempered with water and sand. Initially, a horse was used to power
the pug mill. This was replaced by 1900 by a Potts pug mill. The clay passed through disintegrator rolls to the pug mill.
Initially hand-made bricks were formed in wooden molds. These molds contained six compartments and half of them were
imprinted with the name HIDDEN on the faces of the brick. By 1905, the bricks were machine made using a Henry Martin brick
machine, which automatically filled the six-compartment wooden molds. A metal plate with two handles was used to strike
the excess mud from the mold. By 1913, a stiff-mud auger machine was added to manufacture wire-cut common and rough-textured
bricks. However, the stiff-mud process was not being used by 1981.
View of the six-brick mold used by Hidden Brick
Company. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
View of a worker removing the wet bricks off of
the cable conveyor. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
The bricks were then transported by a cable conveyor or by wheelbarrows to the drying yard where they were set on the ground
to dry under the sun. After a
few hours, the bricks were turned on their sides and bobbed, or hit with a board to help smooth and reform them. Later, when
racks were employed in the drying method, the bricks were sent to the drying yard by a rack and cable system that transported
four bricks per wooden rack. At the drying yard, the racks were stacked in long rows eleven high. This reduced the handling
and damage to the bricks.
View of drying yard at the Hidden brickyard. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
View of a worker setting bricks at the field
kiln. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
After two to three weeks of drying, the bricks were taken to be set in the scove kiln. The bricks were stacked 35 to 40
courses high in a rectangular down-draft kiln, which had a capacity of 35,000 brick. The bricks were fired for 10 to 14 days
using wood as fuel. By 1940, this yard was producing 500,000 to 1.2 million bricks per year (150-day operation). The bricks
sold for $8 per 1,000 in the early days.
View of a field kiln prepared for firing. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
View of workers removing fired brick from the field kiln. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
Common and face bricks were offered by this company. The face bricks, as described by Karl Gurcke, who visited the plant in
1981, were not made with any special treatment. Bricks with more uniform and even burning were separated out as face brick.
A rough textured brick was made when the company ran the stiff-mud machine, though it is not known when the wirecut process
had ceased. The company also stamped any date or name on the brick for an extra fee. Dates were found ranging from 1944 to
1975. An advertisement in 1934 mentioned that this yard also made the brands Homestead, Ideal, and Clinkers, as well as
firebrick, sewer pipe, and drain tile.
View of a pallet of fired brick. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
Bricks were shipped out initially in wagons pulled by Morgan horses. Later, white Packard trucks were used to transport the
brick to market. Most of the bricks were consumed in Vancouver for residences, schools, churches, and commercial structures.
The first large order in 1871 was for a convent for the Vancouver's Sisters of Providence, which still stands as the
Providence Academy at 400 East Evergreen Boulevard in Vancouver. Hidden made 300,000 bricks that first season. Hidden bricks
went into the Lowell Hidden House (1884), St. James Church (1885), Masonic Temple (1886), Hotel Columbia (1890), Carnegie
Library (1909), St. Joseph's Hospital (1911), and Foster Hidden House (1913) all in Vancouver. In 1914, the yard was supplying
20,000 bricks per day with 15 workers for the Vancouver and Portland markets. In 1915, the yard planned to produce 300,000
bricks. In 1922, the yard had orders for 1.5 million bricks and a considerable order from Portland. By 1928, nearly 60 million
bricks had been produced at the first yard. An equal number of bricks were probably produced at the second yard by 1992.
Hidden Brothers advertisement. From Vancouver City Directory, 1912.
Lowell M. Hidden retired from the brick business about 1900 and died in 1923. His sons William Foster and Oliver continued the
brick business at the Main Street location under the name of the Hidden Brothers until 1928, when the yard was moved to 27th
and Kauffman Avenue in Vancouver. When Oliver left the business, Foster ran the yard under the name of the Hidden Brick Company.
Following Foster's death in 1963, the brickyard was run by his son, Robert Hidden, until it was closed in 1992. In 1969, Robert
Hidden purchased the Providence Academy to preserve the very first bricks made by the Hidden Brick Company.
Hidden Bricks
Hidden Common Brick
Common brick is dark red to orange red and uniform in color. Form is good with straight edges and even smooth surfaces.
The surface has a light coating of sand and some display pits up to 1/2 inch across. Stack indentations may be present
on the sides and appear mostly as longitudinal ridges. The top edges may display a lip as much as 1/2 inch thick. The top
face shows very rough longitudinal or transverse strike and pits. Pale yellow flashing may be present as transverse strips.
Overburnt brick may be dark brown to black, or partially with those colors, and usually display cracks. The marked face has
the company name "HIDDEN" in bold raised block letters that span 5 inches and stand 1 1/4 inches inside a rectangular frog
that is 5 7/8 inches long and 2 1/4 inches wide and is about 1/4 inch deep. The Interior contains mostly fine sandy porous
red clay with a few tiny clasts, 1 percent, of subangular white quartz, less than 1/8 inch in diameter. This brick was
made using the soft mud process. Length 8, width 4, height 2 1/2 inches.
View of the marked face of the Hidden common brick. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
View of the sides and unmarked faces of the Hidden common brick. Photo courtesy of Karl Gurcke.
View of the marked face of the Hidden common brick. Letters appear to be thinner. Photo courtesy of Dave Garcia.
View of the marked face of the Hidden common brick. Slightly different font style is shown. Photo courtesy of Dave Garcia.
References
Brick, v. 11, August 2, 1899, p. 142.
Brick and Clay Record, v. 44, no. 11, June 2, 1914, p. 1307.
Brick and Clay Record, v. 47, July 20, 1915, p. 126.
Brick and Clay Record, v. 60, June 27, 1922, p. 1020.
Caldbick, John J. Lowell Mason Hidden opens the Hidden Brick Company in Vancouver, Clark County, in 1871. HistoryLink.org Essay 9132,
accessed April 16, 2018, http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=9132.
Clay Record, v. 24, no. 4, February 29, 1904, p. 44.
Garcia, Dave, written communication, 2019.
Glover, Sheldon L. Clays and Shales of Washington, Washington Division of Geology Bulletin 24, 1941.
Gurcke, Karl. Bricks and Brickmaking, University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho, 1987.
Gurcke, Karl. written communications, 2018.
Hidden, W. Foster. The History of Brickmaking in and Around Vancouver, The Washington Historical Quarterly,
v. 21, no. 2, April 1930, p. 131-132.
Kennedy, George L., personal communications, 2018.
Lentz, Florence K., Lowell M. and W. Foster Hidden Houses. National Register o Historic Places Inventory PH0666807,
1978.
Lowell Mason Hidden. Find A Grave, accessed April 17, 2018, findagrave.com.
Oliver M. Hidden. Find A Grave, accessed April 17, 2018, findagrave.com.
Robert Arthur Hidden. Find A Grave, accessed April 17, 2018, findagrave.com.
Swennes, Donna, personal communications, 2018.
Vancouver City Directory, 1912.
Vancouver City Directory, 1934.
William Foster Hidden. Find A Grave, accessed April 17, 2018, findagrave.com.
