Dutch Brick Construction in New Amsterdam
Imported from TimeWalkOrg/Manhattan wiki
Periods: Manhattan 1664
“Dutch bricks”
Per Wikipedia:
“in New Netherland there are records of brick being imported from the Netherlands as ballast in 1633, and of continued shipments until the American Revolution (1765–1783). Bricks were being fired in New Amsterdam (New York) by 1628, but the imported bricks were of better quality. At first, the bricks were used only for chimneys, but they were later used to face the lower story of the house, and then the entire house.
Dutch brickmakers emigrated to New Netherland, where they built kilns for firing bricks locally. In New Amsterdam, brick was used for the director general’s house, the counting house, the city tavern and other important buildings. Houses were gable-ended, often with stepped designs, and the bricks ranged in color from yellow or red to blue or black. An account of New York published in 1685 said, “The town is broad, built with Dutch brick, consisting of above five hundred houses, the meanest not valued under an hundred pounds.” A New Englander who visited New York in 1704, forty years after the Dutch had yielded the town to the British, admired the appearance of the glazed brickwork of the houses of “diverse coullers and laid in Checkers”. In 1845 there was still a one-story Dutch brick house built in 1696 in Flatbush, Brooklyn. The date and the owner’s initials were formed by blue and red glazed bricks.
Most of the surviving “Dutch Colonial” houses in New York do not in fact follow Dutch architectural practices, but there are seven in Albany County that do. The houses have a wood frame with brick walls as a decorative shell. They each have two parapet gables edged with “mouse toothing” ornamental brickwork. All the Dutch brick buildings used iron wall anchors spread across several bricks to tie the brick shell to the wooden frame of the house. Sometimes the anchor gives the date of construction. The brickwork of the houses incorporated various designs including spear shapes and a form like a fleur-de-lis.”
