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Another Brick in the Wall?

The Trimble Brick Plant

Another history post! Remember the old brick I found in the house, mentioned in this post, marked Trimble, O? My uncle was intrigued and looked into it a bit. He found this site and this site mention a Trimble Brick Company in Trimble, Ohio. Turns out, that is where the brick was manufactured. In the 1880’s -1930’s brickmaking flourished within the Hocking Valley in Ohio, one of these plants was the Trimble Brick Company. I could not find an exact date that the Trimble Brick Company was established, but it was in full swing in 1904. It specialized in paving brick, sidewalk brick, and some building brick. Trimble, Ohio maintains that brick from the Trimble Brick Plant was used to pave the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1909-1910. Yet, the Trimble Brick Company was not the only brick company to make this claim. Another Ohio company, The Metropolitan Paving Company also claims that their brick was used for this purpose. The speedway claims that only brick from Indiana was used.

Mining the Brick Materials for the Trimble Plant, 1910

What makes all of this more interesting was that the first street paved with bricks from the Hocking Valley, bricks made specifically for paving streets, was in Charleston, WV. It was paved in 1873, with “good quality brick” and was reportedly still in working order in 1929.

A better picture of the brick

So, even though I know where and when the brick was manufactured and made, I still have no idea why it was at the house. Did someone take it because of the Trimble connection? That is my guess. If I was a mason, I would think it was pretty cool to have a brick with my name on it. I wonder if there was more to the story, though. Was this brick one that was used to pave the roads of Charleston? Did James Trimble or one of his sons help pave , or repair the road in Charleston, and that is how they ended up with it? That is all supposition, and I will probably never know for sure, but I did end up with a great souvenir!

Another view of the Trimble Brick plant

Posted on 03/26/2011 at 9:22 am in History, Photos   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL

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4 Comments to “Another Brick in the Wall?”

    
  1. daseger
    03/26/2011 at 9:31 am

    Old bricks are always great clues to the past! Great post. Donna (streetsofsalem.com)

    Reply
  2. Lindsey
    03/26/2011 at 3:54 pm

    Thanks, Donna! The brick has quite an interesting past, even if I don;t know exactly why it is in the house.

    Reply
  3. Jan
    03/27/2011 at 9:00 pm

    The Culver Block was the primary paver used at Indy. I think you can find that info on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway site. I started collecting vintage pavers last year. There is an international brick collectors club, too. Last year I had a brick swap with another collector in Ohio. We are going to do a vintage paver project this coming summer.

    Reply
    • Lindsey
      03/28/2011 at 9:26 am

      Hi Jan! Someone that knows about these bricks! Yeah, I don’t know why two different Ohio plants claimed that they made the brick for the Indy speedway. It doesn’t really makes sense for Ithem to use bricks from another state, when they could use their own. I tried to find more specific dates for the Trimble plant, but really could only find two websites about it at all. That’s cool that people trade them like really heavy baseball cards! I’ll be sure to check out your blog to see the project, it sounds really interesting!

      Reply
    

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