

Brickyard Blues: Chicago's brick salvagers (1999) - gwern
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/brickyard-blues/Content?oid=898211

======
dionidium
_Brick peddlers trolled the city at night, razing abandoned buildings
themselves. They pounded down walls with sledgehammers. They fastened chains
between their truck bumpers and wrecking bars wedged into windows and hit the
gas, yanking down bricks. A few people died when walls collapsed on them, but
that didn 't deter the steady flow of peddlers, who hauled their loot to used-
brick companies, stacked them in the companies' yards, and sold them for five
times what they made at demolition sites._

This is still a big problem in St. Louis. Brick rustlers often remove just the
weakest wall, resulting in "dollhouses" like this one:

* [https://instagram.com/p/0f9Ax2hAbj/](https://instagram.com/p/0f9Ax2hAbj/)

Of course, they sometimes get the whole structure. Sites like this one aren't
uncommon:

* [https://instagram.com/p/tvZAKFBASH/](https://instagram.com/p/tvZAKFBASH/)

------
joezydeco
Having owned a house built (ca. 1930s) with Chicago common brick, I say
definitely say it looks great but it needs a ton of care. The brick is so
porous that any hard set of freeze/thaw cycles (like we've had here in Chicago
the last couple of years) will start some serious damage and spalling.

Use it to make your interior look trendy, but get something more durable for
the exterior if you plan to build with it.

------
theorique
Fascinating stories of these guys. The story is 15 years old - is the
situation still like this, or has it changed in Chicago?

