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Wes Swanson joined the Practical Preservation podcast to discuss historic brick making, lime-based mortar, and his journey to preservation through his love of history. We discussed a variety of topics related to historic masonry including:
- The difference between modern and historic bricks, how they get their color, and what they are made of
- His research of Lancaster City brickmaking 1700’s through the modern era (he has presented the History of Brickmaking and worked with Rockford Plantation to plan STEM lessons based on historic masonry and the masonry trade)
- The Chicago fire and its effect on the Lancaster City building code (no more frame buildings)
Resources discussed:
Mortar analysis: LimeWorks or Lancaster Lime Works
Tools to remove mortar: Trow & Holden
Bio:
Wes Swanson is an American History teacher at Hempfield school district and also a mason. He has been working in the masonry trade since he was 16. He is currently the owner of Wes Swanson Masonry. After earning a graduate degree in American studies from Penn State he began researching the history of brick making in Lancaster county and has given several lectures on the topic. He has also consulted with Rockford Plantation to plan STEM lessons involving historic brick making and the masonry trade. Syncing his passion for history and masonry he focuses a lot of his masonry work in the summer on brick and stone preservation.
Contact Info:
email: wes_swanson@aol.com
phone: 717-419-5706
Presentation: Brick Making in Lancaster County, July 15th, 7PM at the Mount Joy Historical Society
Speaker 1:
Thank you for tuning in to The Practical Preservation Podcast. Please take a moment to visit our website, practicalpreservationservices.com for additional information and tips to help you restore your historical home. If you’ve not done so, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud and also like us on Facebook.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to The Practical Preservation Podcast, hosted by Danielle and Jonathan Keperling. Keperling Preservation Services is a family-owned business based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, dedicated to the preservation of our built architectural history for today’s use, as well as future generations. Our weekly podcast provides you with expert advice, specific to the unique needs of renovating a historic home, educating by sharing our from the trenches preservation knowledge and our guests expertise, balancing modern needs while maintaining the historical significance, character, and beauty of your period home.
Danielle Keperling:
Wes Swanson is an American history teacher at Hempfield School District, and also a mason. He’s been working in the masonry trade since he was 16. He is currently the owner of Wes Swanson Masonry. After earning a graduate degree in American Studies from Penn State, he began researching the history of brick making in Lancaster County and has given several lectures on the topic. He has also consulted with Rockford Plantation to plan STEM lessons involving historic brick lessons and the masonry trade. Syncing his passion for history and masonry, he focuses a lot of his masonry work in the summer on brick and stone preservation.
Danielle Keperling:
Today on The Preservation Podcast, we have Wes Swanson with us. Thank you for joining us, Wes.
Wes Swanson:
Sure thing, Danielle, happy to be here.
Danielle Keperling:
So I had found Wes, kind of the same way I find most of the podcast guests. I read something interesting and then I go searching for them. And then we found out we had a connection in common from the past. So it’s been fun getting to know Wes and his preservation journey, which he devotes time to. Well, I guess you devote your time teaching history and also encourage preservation.
Wes Swanson:
Yeah, that’s right. I’m an actual teacher at Hempfield School District. So most of my time’s devoted to that, but I give all the extra time that I have towards preservation and working in the masonry field. So it’s a nice balance and I really enjoy it.
Danielle Keperling:
Yeah, okay. So how did you get started in preservation? Or I guess, was the masonry work that you initially did, was that more modern or was it a mixture?
Wes Swanson:
It was, yeah. Actually I started like a lot of people, when I was a teenager looking for a job. And I had a person that I went to church with and he was a mason. And so I asked if I could work for him, and I did. So he certainly was, and he still is, he’s actually got a fairly large company in the county now, I was his first employee. And he did modern masonry. And so I worked with him, bringing him brick, and mortar, and all that. And learned the trade off of him and it was a great opportunity because it was just him and I, and he was younger then and he taught me the trade. And then when I graduated from high school, I just stayed right with it and worked alongside him and learned the masonry trade, modern masonry of course.
Wes Swanson:
And then as I continued on with the field, I got an itch to go back to college and I loved working with students and teaching. So I decided to go back to North Hill where I got a social studies degree in history and was fortunate enough to land a job here at Hempfield. And I have been teaching now for 13 years.
Wes Swanson:
And then during my time here at Hempfield, I pursued a master’s degree in American studies at Penn State. And that really opened my eyes to kind of a new way of thinking about history, American Studies is history, but there’s a number of different things that kind of play into that as well. And it really kind of opened my eyes more towards researching and even pursuing things that some people might not necessarily think has a fascinating history about it and all kinds of different ideas. So then with that American studies background, where you can study… I mean, we spent a lot of time in that program at the Star Barn, simply studying the Star Barn and looking at architectural history, and things like that that I never really thought of when I was younger.
Danielle Keperling:
Right, is that mostly documentation? Is that what that focuses on? Or was-
Wes Swanson:
American studies is like a blend of history, and culture, and even some English in there. You can sort of study anything you want. Most people don’t necessarily always think about sports or something in history, we always think politics, and war, and those kind of things, but I’ve found that I was inspired that everything had a history. We were learning about history of film, and history of sports, and history of architecture. And so with my masonry background, and I had actually, ever since I stopped working for my old boss when I went back to college, continued doing my own kind of work on the side. And continuing to do modern masonry.
Wes Swanson:
And after I kind of got that American studies bug, I really kind of saw how it was such a fascinating history here, even in the trades, that isn’t as uncovered yet. Whether it’s tradesmen or the trades themselves, and the tools that people use. And I found that to be really interesting.
Wes Swanson:
And so having that background, and knowledge, and skill, I think opened me up to some other opportunities. And then I was asked to give a lecture on the history of brick making by the [inaudible 00:06:17] Historical Society which then kind of brought my two interests together in a way that I didn’t really think they would. And then I started digging around and doing a lot of research, going to Lancaster Historical Society and put together a lecture, and learned an incredible amount about bricks and how bricks are made. I had the opportunity to tour the Glen-Gery plant. And if anything, once I really kind of started to understand that side of things, the academic side, the intellectual side, it started to make me really rethink the masonry side of things and started to kind of send me in the direction more of preservation.
Wes Swanson:
So kind of developed organically, I guess you could say. And so now I’ve really enjoyed getting the hands on side of the preservation, still continuing in my masonry business doing a lot of preservation work, but also the academic and the intellectual side as well that kind of comes with the background that I have in history. So it’s kind of neat the two came together really well. So it was neat. Yep.
Danielle Keperling:
Yes, yeah. And I find that to be true with the trades. You start working with whoever you’re working with and you learn from them, but then you start to, as your eyes get open more, you start to see maybe different ways of doing things, not that one way is right and one way is wrong. They’re are just multiple ways to get to the same place.
Wes Swanson:
Sure, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Danielle Keperling:
So you had this modern background, and this from my outside perspective, it doesn’t seem to me like the masonry process itself has changed that much. I know you’re still pretty much laying by hand and doing the pointing or whatever you’re doing for the masonry. But the materials have changed or has the process changed also?
Wes Swanson:
Well, a little bit. I think that on the historic preservation side of things, the materials that we’re using, it’s having a much greater knowledge, historically speaking, of what you’re looking at and how to assess issues that you might see. So shifting into the historical side of things, really it comes down to, let’s say I’m repointing brick work, historic brick work, it’s first recognizing what I’m dealing with, what kind of brick I’m dealing with to be quite frank, being able to identify even when those brick were possibly fired, gives you a lot of understanding of how to work with those brick. And then going about using the right process to remove mortar and things.
Wes Swanson:
And so a lot of guys, I find, make a lot of mistakes when they’re removing mortar. I try never to bring a grinder up on my walls. I take all of my brick joints out, if I’m dealing with lime mortar by hand. And then, of course, absolutely refilling the joints with lime-based mortar. It’s one of the saddest things, going down the streets of Lancaster City and seeing all the Portland type mortar that’s being put back into these joints and the devastation that does these buildings.
Danielle Keperling:
Right, and there’s really nothing you can do to repair that.
Wes Swanson:
Yeah. There’s really not. And I mean, once somebody has gone ahead and put in Portland mortar into brick, older brick, softer brick, my feeling is, and some people might disagree with it, but my feeling is, once you’ve done that, it’s almost worse to go back in and remove all that mortar, whether you’re grinding it out or you’re trying to chisel it out. That mortar is so hard, that it’s harder than the brick around it obviously. And so you chip and deface the brick trying to remove that old mortar. So it’s really sad to see that.
Wes Swanson:
There’s so many advantages to using lime mortar. And I’m sure we might touch on that as we move through our lecture, or our talk here.
Danielle Keperling:
Yeah. I know-
Wes Swanson:
I was going to say, I think that one of the things is, a lot of the modern masons, not all of them, but some of them, obviously are interested in… They know what they know. They don’t know the historic side of things. So they see brick and they say, “Well, this is what we use. This is what we’re going to do.” And they make a mistake. And to be honest with you, the way I was trained and the way I was 10 or 12 years ago, you didn’t know any difference. It’s just what you felt was the right thing to do, and so you did it. And now, looking back, it’s like, “Man, that was a really bad move.” So a lot of the modern guys, they’re still doing that. They don’t quite understand the concept of what they’re doing to the brick when they put modern mortar into those bricks.
Danielle Keperling:
Yeah. I agree. And I know that my dad would always explain, and I’m sure you know much more about this, but the brick, the outside is almost like the crust on a bread. And once you lose that, whether it’s the face blows off because of the mortar being harder, and the water needs to go somewhere, once you lose that, then your walls just deteriorate. So yeah, to go back and repoint, I think that is the only option to protect the building.
Wes Swanson:
Yeah. And there’s a misconception in terms of compression strength. That for a brick building, you want to put the hardest product back inside those mortar joints as if that’s a better thing. And in fact, the harder it is, the better. And that’s absolutely a misguided type of thinking. The beauty of lime mortar is that it’s actually softer than the brick around it. And what it allows is, it allows movement within the wall. The walls can move and the fracture point’s going to be on the lime mortar. And the lime mortar can move with it. It can actually even sort of fix itself if there’s a crack there.
Wes Swanson:
If you have Portland mortar inside there, the bricks are the ones that crack. And obviously as you said earlier, the ability for a wall to breathe, and to allow moisture to be released outside of the mortar joints is incredibly important. And lime allows that, whereas the Portland mortar traps it and so the only place then that water can go is out to the face of the brick. So you see quite frequently with older buildings that have been repointed incorrectly, we call spalling, where the face of the brick begins to pop off and so forth. And obviously we see major damage that’s done when people try to sandblast the faces of brick off, because that’s the fired face, like you said, the crust of the bread. You take that fired edge off and now you’re opening up an entire brick face to damage. And you can do that with sandblasting or you can do that with incorrect mortar, where the mortar itself spalls the face of the brick off. And it doesn’t take long to walk around any city to see all kinds of examples of that, sadly. So yeah.
Danielle Keperling:
Right. So I know you said you toured the Glen-Gery plant. I know that they’re fired hotter, but are the modern brick and the historic brick, are they made from the same materials or is the composition even different? Or is it just the firing temperature?`
Wes Swanson:
Yeah, that’s a great question. And this is a piece that I really find most fascinating is the sort of the dynamic that goes into the brick making. So if we start with going to the Glen-Gery brick, one of the things that the modern brick manufactures do now is the run what’s called a tunnel kiln. So what they can do is… Essentially, imagine a train car, like a flatbed train car with thousands of brick piled up on it. And they can move that through this long, let’s just call it 100 yard tunnel kiln, with varying degrees of heat. And so this car with bricks stacked on top of it is going to start at the beginning of the tunnel where the temperature is going to slowly, slowly increase as it goes through. And it’s going to get to it’s peak heat, it’s around 1900 to 2000 degrees. And then it’s going to, as the train car continues to move along at a very, very slow pace, the heat will then continue to decrease.
Wes Swanson:
And so you bring the bricks up to heat, and you bring them back down again, essentially the same way you would do in an old-time kiln where you’re building fire underneath the brick, you build the heat up and then you bring the heat back down again. But the neat thing about the tunnel kilns is, at least in Glen-Gery perspective, in terms of production, they can just keep hooking up new cars and just keep sending them through.
Danielle Keperling:
[crosstalk 00:14:59] sending more through, yeah.
Wes Swanson:
Exactly. They never have to stop, necessarily, production, bring it all the way down and refire everything up like an old time kiln would. And what it also does for them is, they get a production rate, in terms of what we would call sort of face brick, brick that have been fired properly of almost 98%. Where, if you go back to the old time kilns, the original kilns, especially in what we call an updraft kiln, which is sort of the kind you might see in the colonial period, they may only be getting 60% face brick out of that. Which means there’s a lot of brick in the kiln that are either under fired, a lot of people know those as salmon brick, they’re a little extra soft, or over-fired where they’re extra glazed, almost dark and very brittle. We call those clinkers.
Wes Swanson:
And so in the 1800’s, or even early 1900’s, all those salmon brick, they could still be used because those were going to be used to build the interior walls. And you of course would collect all your face brick and use those for the outside.
Wes Swanson:
But in terms of the composition of the brick, we always think of brick being made out of clay. Now over in Glen-Gery, they use shale. And so Glen-Gery has found a run, a vein of shale that runs for miles in York and all the way up. If you follow it, almost up into Redding, I think the man told me. And so they’re just as much miners, really, miners, they’re mining, as they are brick makers. So they’re using shale.
Wes Swanson:
Obviously clay and shale, depending who you talk to, an earth scientist, and I’ll kind of tell you the differences between the two, but they have a lot of similarities, clay versus shale.
Wes Swanson:
So in the old days, what really colored your brick were a number of factors. Number one, most importantly the material that you were using. And so, usually, typically the more iron you have in your clay or your shale is going to redden, or make your brick a little more red. And then the other thing that’s going to play into the color is what they called flux. So when they were, in the 1800’s making their brick, they would use brick molds and they would have to put sand in the brick molds. And of course that would allow the brick to slip out of the mold. But that sand, when the brick were fired, actually acted as a flux and interacted with the gasses and the head that was created. And that kind of helped play a role in the color of the brick as well.
Wes Swanson:
Sometimes brick that sat at the top of the pile of brick in the kiln, where some of the gasses hung out, would get a little darker. And depending on how they stacked their brick, some brick would have streaks in them. Today we call that flashing, where you might have a partially red brick, and then a little bit of a dark streak, and then partially red. And that’s because the brick was sitting there where the gasses were and the gasses were making the brick darker, but another brick was up against it so it didn’t get the gas up against it. So you have what’s called a flashing, a red, and a black, and a red. And you see that when making modern brick today.
Wes Swanson:
Today, the Glen-Gery plant, in order to make all their color for their brick, they use what they call frit and it’s actually something they spray on the brick. And it’s a number of things, a little bit of sand, some glass, and things like that. So that’s why you might end up having today a modern brick called, let’s say, a Danish 1776, but when you look at it, it looks white. But if you were to cut it open, it’s red on the inside. And that’s because it’s that frit that they spray on the outside.
Danielle Keperling:
Oh. I didn’t know that.
Wes Swanson:
Yeah. So they didn’t have the capability of doing that, obviously, in the 1800’s, so the color of their brick were really dictated by the material they were using. Which is why some people will ask me, they’ll say, “Hey, can you determine where this brick came from?” And sometimes you can, but regionally speaking it’s difficult because for the most part-
Danielle Keperling:
They were using the same materials.
Wes Swanson:
… the color that you’re going to be pulling out of Lancaster, the material that you’re going to be pulling out of Lancaster may be from one brickyard to another five miles apart, or quite frankly even over in York, 20 miles apart, they’re not going to vary that much.
Wes Swanson:
But there are some. So up in Redding, there used to be a Glen-Gery plant in Redding, in Shoemakersville. And they produced an incredibly bright red brick. And it was really popular in the 30s, and 40s, and 50s. And some people will call me over to try to see if I can find, replicate that brick. And it’s really difficult to do that now, because the Shoemakerville plant closed down and they had gotten their hands on it really particularly bright red brick.
Wes Swanson:
Another example of that would be the Mountville brickyard that ran, [inaudible 00:19:53] the late 1800’s right up to about the 1920’s. And their brickyard actually sat today where the Sperry New Holland plant is, next to the railroad tracks in Mountville. And you can still see the side of the hill where they dug out of. Well the material that they were digging out of, created a chocolate brown colored brick. And you can still see a couple of houses in Lancaster City that were made out of Mountville brick. And they advertised that chocolate covered brick. And then the man that owned the brickyard, after a little while of using up his supply, he couldn’t find that vein again. And he ended up struggling to sell his brick.
Wes Swanson:
So depending on where you are in different veins you’re in, you can see different colors. But today all that’s pretty much gone, simply because of their ability to kind of manipulate colors with the flux that they spray on the outside of the brick. So that’s kind of interesting there.
Wes Swanson:
And so, thinking about that historic preservation side, I said earlier that the old time brick kilns, they’re called updraft kilns, scove kilns, they would basically in colonial periods, build an outside structure of brick. They would stucco it. And then they would, on the inside, build tunnels and they would stack all their brick up on top of it, and then they would fire the brick. So brick that are fired in an updraft scove kiln, tend to be much more inconsistent in their size and color, and even their hardness, simply because the inefficiency of the way that they were fired.
Wes Swanson:
Then, around the end of the 1800s, we start to see more use of what are called beehive kilns. And these beehive kilns allowed the gasses to be brought back in and flow around the brick, instead of just being dissipated sort of up and out of the kiln, like the updraft scove kilns were.
Danielle Keperling:
Like a chimney, right.
Wes Swanson:
These had a top and a big chimney on them. So they could keep that heat in and around the brick longer and they would get a much more effective fire rate. But even still there were inconsistencies there. So really it isn’t until you start seeing these tunnel kilns in the more modern era of brick making that you get that real consistent face brick, consistent hardness. So what that means is, when you go back to the 1800s and you’re dealing with preserving brick that more often than now were made in an updraft scove kiln, they’re going to be incredibly soft. And that’s especially true when you take the face off of them. But if you bring a grinder up near them, I mean, it’s like butter, the grinder will go right through them. And it’s just because of the way that they were fired. They were never really, in most cases, brought to the heat that they really should have been, or at least according to modern standards.
Wes Swanson:
And so, of course as we said earlier, incorporating Portland mortar, which did not come around was not even in their vocabulary for the most part, at that time period. And incorporating that into really old brick is just doing an incredible disservice. Portland, really gets discovered in the 1820s, but really doesn’t make it’s way into American usage, in terms of being used to lay brick, honestly, until the 1920s and the 1930s is when you really start to see it. So my motto is, if I come across a home, whatever was original to what was put in those brick, I’m going to put back into that. And it can be tricky because the 1920s and ’30s you see some real weird changes where guys are starting to incorporate some Portland. You see some interesting mortar ideas and things [crosstalk 00:23:43] at that time period.
Danielle Keperling:
Mixes.
Wes Swanson:
Yeah, typically, typically pre-1912, and I know that sounds like a weird hard number, but pre-1912, pre-1920, if that house is built prior to that time period, they’re using lime mortar. Typically that’s the case, and it’s best to replace it with that lime mortar.
Danielle Keperling:
As you were going through that I was thinking of different instances where we’ve come across houses where the brick has been damaged from somebody not doing the right thing. But when you were talking about the… We recently, within the past year, were at a home that was stone. And much like the… Oh, I can’t think of the… Font, Font Hill, where Mercer Tile Works is, I don’t know if you’ve been there. It’s its in [crosstalk 00:24:42] county. But that’s concrete. And it was an early concrete building. We were trying out new building materials. [inaudible 00:24:52] And the house that we were at, we were there and we were[inaudible 00:24:57], we were giving our opinion on it, and another preservation-minded person came, and not everybody has the same thoughts within any industry.
Wes Swanson:
Oh sure, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Danielle Keperling:
And it was a storm building, that it was originally Portland because it was in that early 1900s where they had built this house out of stone and Portland, and the preservation were like, you have to take all of that out. And I’m thinking, “That’s how it was built.” I understand from a purist standpoint, but that is the history of the house. It’s different philosophies.
Wes Swanson:
Sure, sure. It is. It is. And if that’s how it was built, yeah, I’d go with that same kind of motto too. [crosstalk 00:25:42] a little bit of a different story.
Danielle Keperling:
Yeah. Do you do your own analysis then on the mortar, or do you send it out?
Wes Swanson:
I do. For me, for timing constraints and just having the technology, I’ll send it out. So I work with Penn Stone, but there’s also Lancaster Lime Works. And they’re really good in there as well. They’ll take mortar samples, also send it in to Penn Stone, and there’s a company that they send it to down near Philly called Lime Works. And they’ll do an analysis for me and they’ll kind of break it down to determine obviously color, what kind of sand would have been used. Sand plays a major role in the lime process. And then even if there was other agents that were put in, maybe a flack or a horse hair, or what kind of coloring, those kinds of things. So yeah, I normally send all mine out. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Danielle Keperling:
Okay, okay. Very good. Let’s see. So I know that you’ve done… And that’s actually how I found you initially, I read an article about one of your seminars. And so I know that you’ve done the history of brick making, you kind of talked about that in the beginning. And you also did Day, was it, at the House that Hands Built for middle schoolers and high schoolers.
Wes Swanson:
Yeah, yeah. Rockford.
Danielle Keperling:
Yeah, at Rockford. Is there any interesting facts that you’ve uncovered or discovered while you’ve been doing the research for those that maybe our listeners would be interested in?
Wes Swanson:
Yeah, there’s a lot of fascinating stuff. I mean, the American studies side of me is interested in the brick. But I also am interested in the people. And I love that side of it. It’s not going to help me probably at all in restoring brick, but the people are fascinating. There are an incredible number of brick makers. And I’m mostly focused on Lancaster City, that kind of pop up in the city, they come and go. They tend not to last very long. They’re going to have a brickyard, chances are they’re going to run out of material. And then you see them pop up later on.
Wes Swanson:
I was actually able to identify a document as far as I can find out, in Lancaster City every person that had a brickyard going back to the 1700s, all the way up to the modern era. And I was being the history teacher that I am, I actually was able to document exactly where their brickyard was. And I actually did that on Google Earth. So every brickyard that existed from the 1700s up to, quite frankly, the end of brick making in Lancaster County which ended with the Lancaster County Brick Company. I’ve documented where they are on the map and a couple of interesting things that I discovered, we talk about Martin Meylin. A lot of people know Martin Meylin as being the gunsmith.
Danielle Keperling:
Yes.
Wes Swanson:
And historical markers, the Martin Meylin the gunsmith. Well, the truth is he actually pulled a patent to open up a brickyard. And he intended to make brick and he also intended to make clay tile, which was interesting kind of bringing that idea from Europe. And the truth is, we actually have more documented evidence that he had a brickyard, along the Conastoga Creek there, than we do that he actually had a rifle shop. I’m sure he did. North Hill University did a lot of archeological work to try to determine for sure if the so called, Martin Meylin Gun Shop, really is the Martin Meylin Gun Shop. And they actually kind of came up with not the answers they wanted, but there’s a lot more documented information, I just me personally think on that. I find that interesting.
Wes Swanson:
I also found that after 1873… So one of the things that I use to determine where brickyards was, looking at these things called Sanborn Insurance maps. So insurance companies want to find out for insurance purposes, every building in the city, to determine it’s, obviously, for insurance purposes of how much it’s worth and/or problems that might occur from that. And one of the things that they do, is they identify what those buildings are. So it helped me determine where brickyards were, and it also helped me determine what that building might have been made out of, wood, brick, stone, those kind of things.
Wes Swanson:
And so after 1873, Lancaster County actually passed an ordinance that no future buildings could be made out of wood, or framed after that point. And essentially because that happens right after the Great Chicago Fire. So a lot of these insurance companies are trying to make sure that… So you really start to see an uptick in brick makers in Lancaster City. One of the things that is interesting, not all of them, but a good majority of the brick makers tended to be on the west side of Lancaster City. And I think one of the main reasons for that is because, and we always talk about the different streams and things that ran through Lancaster that are mostly been covered over by now, but those original streams that a lot of them ran on the west side of town, were depositories for a lot of the clay and shale material that these guys needed.
Danielle Keperling:
That makes sense. Yeah.
Wes Swanson:
So we see a large number kind of in that west side.
Wes Swanson:
A number of them were Civil War veterans, they’re with a big brickyard called the Wise Brick Plant that actually sat where the Country Garden 6 pack is, on the west side of Lancaster City, kind of near Prospect Avenue. And they had, the Wise family had several generations of brick makers. They lasted until the 1920s, making their brick in a very old school kind of way with updraft scove kilns and kind of using the old school kind of ways that their fathers had done it. And thy continued that into the 1920s.
Wes Swanson:
In fact, the Wise brothers made the brick for a lot of the original buildings at North Hill University, Dunter Hall and the Presidents house, [inaudible 00:31:34] Library were made out of their bricks. The father, Christian was his name, he fought in the Civil War and fought at so many different battles that are of course are interesting to me as a history teacher, it was neat to see that.
Danielle Keperling:
Yeah.
Wes Swanson:
And just kind of following the different guys that are involved in that. There was a guy, Henry Martin, who had a brick manufacturing company. He actually made the equipment to make bricks. And his son ends up taking over that, and that becomes Posey Iron Works. And then they organize themselves together with the Wolsens and Armstrong. And this big conglomerate ends up forming what becomes Lancaster Brick Company, which is going to get founded right after World War I and it’s going to last all the way up to the 1980s.
Wes Swanson:
And some people, a lot of people still talk about the Lancaster Brick Company today. And the Lancaster Brick Company had set itself up over near F&M, near the sports fields at F&M, kind of in that whole area there where they’re putting in-
Danielle Keperling:
Oh, that they just redid.
Wes Swanson:
Yep. All that. That’s all where their big brickyard was. And so it’s kind of fascinating reading about the history of those guys, seeing that they did.
Wes Swanson:
And then another thing that’s interesting is, when you know a brickyard sat there, and you also know when that brickyard was ended then you look at that area and you go, “Ah, that’s why all those houses were built after 1920. Or that’s why all those houses were built after 1890, because there was brickyard that sat in that space for that long.”
Danielle Keperling:
Right.
Wes Swanson:
So it’s kind of neat to see that. So a lot of fascinating Lancaster County history, you’re bringing in old Lancaster County names and all that. And I find it interesting.
Danielle Keperling:
Yeah. Yeah. I think I’m going to make sure that I get myself to one of your History of Brick Making seminars. I’m finding this very interesting and I’m learning all kinds of stuff that I didn’t know.
Wes Swanson:
[inaudible 00:33:29] In fact, it was interesting, one of the big brick manufacturers, well another one of the guys was a guy by the name of James Prangley. And I was called by, a phone call from a woman who asked me to come and restore parts of her house, the brick work at her house she lived in, James Prangley’s home on West Chestnut Street. And so it was really neat to do all this research on James Prangley and then literally go to his house and repoint his bricks. Some of those things are neat.
Danielle Keperling:
Yeah, that’s exciting. It’s exciting when you get those connections from different parts of your life, but also your work is all connected together.
Wes Swanson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Danielle Keperling:
So is there anything that you wish you knew when you started out that you know now? And I think that could be… You could take that however you want, I won’t [crosstalk 00:34:27] you.
Wes Swanson:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was a young, dumb mason back in the day. I wish I had the knowledge piece. I’m sure that, as much as I can stand here and sort of show my anger perhaps at masons that sometimes don’t take the time to preserve the way they should, I’m sure, I know that I did that. You didn’t know any different. And I made a lot of those mistakes when I was back, 15 or so years ago. And I think that’s one of the biggest challenges in preservation is the education piece, convincing people that they’re investing in time, they’re investing in history.
Danielle Keperling:
Right.
Wes Swanson:
And we’ve got to preserve these buildings. We talk about ignorance, and I get frustrated sometimes with… some people just don’t know. I just didn’t know. And once they learn, they’re like, “Oh, that’s great.” But I think the biggest frustration for me is people, once they learn or a mason that knows and still refuses to, “Ah, whatever. It doesn’t matter.”
Danielle Keperling:
They don’t care, right.
Wes Swanson:
Yeah. That’s very frustrating. So that education piece. And I know that Penn Stone’s been doing a good job trying to get the word out. Like I said, Lancaster Lime Works does a great job at really trying to spread that knowledge. And I think the other piece that really has to come with it is… And I know a lot of people don’t like city ordinances and rules coming down and those kinds of things, but if you get in to certain parts of the city, they’ll be more picky about the color of the siding, or the color that you paint a particular house to make sure that it’s historically accurate than they will about what the mason’s doing to repoint the bricks.
Wes Swanson:
And so part of that is just getting that educational piece, not just to the masons themselves, but also into the city or the townships to recognize when they’re dealing with these historical brick buildings. And then recognizing or at least having the understanding or the knowledge to identify. Like I said earlier, how are these bricks fire? What kind of kiln were these bricks fired in? And more importantly, at what time period were they fired? And quite frankly, 80 to 90% of Lancaster buildings at least, especially downtown, are all going to come out of the 19th century and were almost all fired in updraft scove kilns, at best maybe beehive kilns. So that knowledge piece, I think is the most difficult thing. It’s just getting people, sort of, homeowners as well, knowledgeable about their expectations for the person that’s coming in to do the work on their house.
Wes Swanson:
And there’s no doubt about it, it takes longer. I follow the National Park Service guidelines. When I repoint brick, I have a special tool, specially made by Trow & Holden for removing lime mortar. And I don’t bring a grinder, as best I can, to any of those brick. And so it takes longer. It’s just a little bit of a more time consuming process. It’s worth it, but it’s sometimes hard to convince homeowners and masons themselves that it’s worth this extra step that we’re taking here for preservation.
Danielle Keperling:
Yeah. And that is true, I think, with most preservation. And we often say, it’s 80% of it is semi-skilled labor. That you could teach somebody to do this fairly easily. And if the homeowner was willing to do some of that front-end work themselves and then bring an expert in to do what is the expert work. And if somebody wants to pay you to do all of the prep work that’s fine, but it’s not necessary to have an expert do that.
Wes Swanson:
Yeah sure.
Danielle Keperling:
And we often will tell people that, because it is, it gets expensive. Not because it’s necessarily expensive, but because it’s labor intensive.
Wes Swanson:
It is.
Danielle Keperling:
And labor is expensive.
Wes Swanson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, you’re exactly right.
Danielle Keperling:
I think you kind of touched on it, but have you noticed any trends in preservation? Have you had anything that you’ve noticed when you’re out in the world?
Wes Swanson:
I think, even though I just kind of spent two minutes talking about me being frustrated at people not taking the time to do certain things, I do think, to be honest, that over the lat five years I have seen, throughout Lancaster City anyway, a greater knowledge base of people being aware of the home they own. And taking ownership of that and making sure that things are done right. And so I’ve been happy to see that in a lot of cases. People willing to take the time or more knowledgeable about lime versus Portland mortars.
Wes Swanson:
What came first, the chicken or the egg? It may be because people are calling me because they’re aware of who I am. But I’ve gotten a much more frequency of calls from people now, homeowners, specifically asking me before I even tell them about how to repoint mortar, already telling me, “You know this needs to be done in lime mortar.” And I’m like, “Oh, great. You’re already [crosstalk 00:39:47].”
Danielle Keperling:
And I think the internet helps with that too. Don’t you? People doing research on the internet ahead of time, yeah.
Wes Swanson:
I agree. Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely. So those are all good things. I see a trend, I definitely see a trend moving in that direction.
Danielle Keperling:
And it’s more ecological too. And I think that people like that component too.
Wes Swanson:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. [crosstalk 00:40:10]
Danielle Keperling:
Okay, so how should someone contact you?
Wes Swanson:
Yeah. If anyone would want to get a hold of me, I have my own company. It’s called Wes Swanson Masonry. They’re more than welcome to email me, Wes_Swanson@aol.com or they can give me a call on my cell phone, 717-419-5706. [crosstalk 00:40:30]
Danielle Keperling:
Okay. And I’ll make sure those are all on our website.
Wes Swanson:
Oh, yeah. Thank you. I get busy obviously, I mostly devote the summer time to my masonry side of things. I do some spring and fall work. I will tell people right from the get go here, I’m scheduling for 2020. It’s kind of the way of the situation I’m in now. This is looking to be a really good summer for me and I have a lot of work.
Danielle Keperling:
That’s great.
Wes Swanson:
But even if people… I love the educational side of things. I don’t necessarily have to be the guy that does the job. I care about the buildings in Lancaster and I want to see them done right. I enjoy educating people about these things. So even if somebody was just interested in finding more about their brick or they wanted to chat or talk a little bit about the process, I’m more than happy to call and talk, and kind of go through that process with people, even if it doesn’t mean a job. I really enjoy doing that as well, the educational piece is important to me.
Danielle Keperling:
Well very good, thank you. And then I was going to ask if you had any offers for our listeners, but that sounds like a great offer. And I know you had mentioned that you’re doing some lectures also.
Wes Swanson:
Yeah, so I have definitely have one coming up here in July. I believe July 15th at the Mount Joy Historical Society. And I am also in the works with Lancasterhistory.org, we’re looking at maybe putting one together there. One of the things I did one at Penn Stone, and that was really neat to be able to do it at Penn Stone, but they didn’t have a really big area and we filled it up pretty quickly. It’s one of the neat things about Lancaster County Historic Society is they have pretty big rooms. So I’ll be talking with them and maybe we’ll be able to get something on the books here. But at this point, Mount Joy, I think July 15th is the one I have on the books and I can make sure that I give you that exact information, Danielle, and you can put that on your site too.
Danielle Keperling:
Definitely, I’ll make sure it’s on the website.
Wes Swanson:
Yeah.
Danielle Keperling:
Okay. Well thank you very much. Thank you for taking time out of, I know the end of the year is a busy time. So thank you for taking some time out to chat with me today.
Wes Swanson:
Sure thing. I enjoyed it. Thank you, Danielle.
Danielle Keperling:
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to The Practical Preservation podcast. The resources discussed during this episode are on our website at practicalpreservationservices.com/podcast. If you received value from this episode and know someone else that will get value from it as well, please share it with them. Join us next week for another episode of The Practical Preservation podcast. For more information on restoring your historic home, visit practicalpreservationservices.com