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The Brick Barons of St. Louis
Charles Gratiot owned one of the original fire brick companies in St. Louis which became Evens & Howard Fire Brick Co in 1867. You may recognize the Gratiot name from the street downtown. He's the son of fur trader Charles Gratiot, Sr. and Victoire Chouteau, the daughter of wealthy merchant and founder of St. Louis Pierre Laclede.
*Fun fact: his daughter Julia married a Chouteau- her cousin!
Edward Canfield Sterling was the founder of Hydraulic Brick Company and the inventor of the hydraulic press that formed bricks. The Eads Bridge and its railroad tunnel are constructed with Hydraulic bricks. People were wary of the new machine and its quality, but it grew into an empire. Here is La Casada, Sterling's southern California mansion where he retired:
William Tandy Christy established the a clay plant (where there is now a Big Lots and 7-11 at Kingshighway and Christy) when he moved from Tennessee to Missouri in the mid 1800s. His estate, where cattle could be observed grazing in the meadows surrounding many ponds, stretched from Kingshighway at Eichelberger all the way to Chippewa and Brannon! His son started Christy Fire Clay Company in 1881 and merged with the Laclede Brick Co. in 1907.
The Clay Sources
The Cheltenham Belt is the name of the region in St. Louis where all the clay deposits and mines were, mostly in what is now called Dogtown and Clayton-Tamm. There were 25 documented mines in the area, some with shafts in the basements of residential homes! Follow this link for a complete list with approximate locations- you might find you live above a mine!
http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/dogtown/history/mines.html
http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/dogtown/maps/park-mines-01.html
An old map of the Dogtown and surrounding areas, clay deposits are numbered.
Laclede Sewer Pipe and Fire Brick Company, a familiar name you may have seen, was massive, and just one of several enormous brick operations in St. Louis.
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