{"id":30546,"date":"2020-07-15T00:01:26","date_gmt":"2020-07-15T07:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=30546"},"modified":"2020-07-15T00:01:26","modified_gmt":"2020-07-15T07:01:26","slug":"antique-bricks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/antique-bricks\/","title":{"rendered":"I’ve Got a Pile of Antique Bricks in My Backyard. And They’re Headed for the Dump. Sheltering at Home Week 18"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"antique<\/a>
Our backyard stairway made of antique bricks — pavers — from the Atlas Paving Brick Company of San Francisco. Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

July 14, 2020. Sheltering at Home Week 18<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve got a pile of antiques in my back yard. And I’m about to send them off to the dump.<\/p>\n

They’re bricks, rose-red antique bricks — pavers — manufactured for the streets of San Francisco some time between 1913 an 1921 by the Atlas Paving Brick Company.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for the Atlas company, cobblestone streets were soon to be replaced by concrete and asphalt.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for Jon and me, hundreds of these lovely chunks of clay found their way across the San Francisco Bay and into a staircase that wends its way across our backyard.<\/p>\n

\"antique<\/a>
Rose-red, 100-year-old Atlas pavers. Notice the lugs at the four corners. They were intended to keep the pavers from rubbing against each other under the weight of street traffic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We’ve been walking on those bricks since we moved into our house in 1978. I couldn’t help noticing their unusual color right from the beginning. Also their solidity and weight — 9 1\/2 pounds each!<\/p>\n

Still, all these years, I had no idea that those pretty bricks had a history — until a few months ago, when Jon and I faced up to the fact that our backyard walkway was falling apart.<\/p>\n

I got down on the ground, took a serious look at my old bricks, Googled the heck out of them, and found out they were antiques.<\/p>\n

Just so you know, there are people who actually\u00a0collect bricks. They study them. They can name the various bricky parts — lugs, marks, clasts, grog. And often they can tell you where your bricks came from, and when.<\/p>\n

Dan Mosier is one of those people. He runs a website called California Bricks. Take a look. I’m serious. It’s fascinating.<\/p>\n

\"brick-walk-and-terrace<\/a>
Our stairway snakes down our backyard to a terrace built by the do-it-yourselfer who once owned our house.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Right now, Jon and I are wondering whether that old brick staircase of ours has to go. Some of the bricks have come loose and fallen off. Others have sunk below the others and become a tripping hazard. Is it time to send them to the dump?<\/p>\n

No one will want my antique bricks, I’m told by various contractors. It’s too hard to chip off the mortar that’s stuck to them. And unless the bricks are reasonably clean, they’re useless.<\/p>\n

(I call them my<\/em> bricks, because, even though they belong to Jon as much as to me, I think they’re wonderful and Jon thinks they’re bricks.)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, those same contractors estimate that a new brick stairway, professionally done, would cost us tens of thousands of dollars. So would a stairway of concrete pavers or natural stone.<\/p>\n

And so, if we decide to replace our antique staircase, Jon and I will have to settle for something cheaper: steps made of timber ties filled<\/a> with decomposed granite, probably. They’d be pretty. They’d be rustic. They’d be reasonably eco-friendly.<\/p>\n

But they wouldn’t be beautiful, rose-red pavers made in San Francisco 100 years ago.<\/p>\n

For a walk down a truly beautiful garden path, go to “Point and Shoot Heaven: Photographing a Flower Garden Just Before Dusk.”<\/a> As for the challenges of indoor gardening, see: “The Dracena Is Dead. Long Live the Dracena.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"antique<\/a>
The bricks in our backyard were manufactured around the time of the world’s last big pandemic — the Spanish flu of 1918.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"antique<\/a><\/p>\n

The antique bricks in our garden staircase are pavers. They were made for the streets of San Francisco 100 years ago. Too bad the staircase is falling apart. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,41],"tags":[2285,2286,472,2287,1188,2288,2289,2182],"class_list":["post-30546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-sheltering-at-home-chronicles","tag-antiques","tag-bricks","tag-garden","tag-hardscape","tag-house","tag-landscaping","tag-pavers","tag-remodel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}