Exploring the Empty Lots
Just after lunch today I decided to take a walk around a few blocks and do a little exploring. It was actually pretty exciting as I lowered myself from a falling window ledge to what once was the basement of an abandoned building. As I stepped down onto an old beam I could hear a crack and I realized that what I was doing was probably not the smartest thing in the world. It was great fun though as each step I took removed me further and further from my reality and closer to closer to a Peter Pan like existence. I even found myself getting a bit caught up in the thoughts of me as some urban Indiana Jones running through backlots and stopping only to see what my next move would be.
When all was said and done I came home with two bricks, one with the name EMPIRE and one with HENDRICKS, and an old bus rear view mirror. They were a great find and will play well into some of the more “Americana folk art” things I currently have in my apartment.
Upon coming home the geek side of me took over and I decided to do a little research on the two bricks I had excavated, so to speak.
The EMPIRE brick comes from Glasco, Newton Hook and Stockport, NY, where there were 8 machines at Glasco by 1910. George Hutton in The Great Hudson River Brick Industry, states that Empire was forced out of business before 1940 due to exhaustion of clay resources in the Stockport area. The plant had undergone a thorough modernization in 1926 including new overhead cranes to load brick onto river barges.
Not much is known about the HENDRICKS brick other than it comes from Ulster, NY and the Hendricks Brick Co. and was probably cast around 1910.
