Bricks and Walls

At many places at the Albany Bulb, you’ll see piles of bricks half-hidden by vegetation, scattered amidst the rubble. They’re worn and unassuming; they are quiet storytellers of our society. In our built landscape, there are few building materials that are so close to the scale of a human. Try picking it up. Though it was probably left at the Bulb between 1963 and 1983, it contains the weight of a century’s worth of stories that involve rebuilding the city of San Francisco. 

The Richmond Pressed Brick Company embodies a complex history filled with both amazing industrial feats that rebuilt communities after the devastating 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, but also stories of systemic racism.

In 1906, San Francisco was rocked by an earthquake that destroyed nearly 500 city blocks and sparked fires that lasted for three days. It killed 3,000 people and left over 400,000 citizens homeless.

Not long before that, clay deposits suitable for bricks had been found in the area between what is now Livermore and Tracy and later near Richmond. Interest in bricks as a building medium soared across California.

By 1880, there were 50 brick manufacturers in the state producing 65 million bricks a year: common brick, pressed brick and firebrick. With its streets demolished and its people distraught, San Francisco began seeking bricks to help rebuild its communities.

The Richmond Pressed Brick Company (a subsidiary of a Los Angeles manufacturer) responded to the need to rebuild and in 1907, just a year after the earthquake, opened their first branch on 40 acres of land. 

The Richmond Pressed Brick Company chose Richmond because of its proximity to a port close to San Francisco, and because it was located close to deep and pure clay. Within a thousand-foot radius, blue clay shale and red shale were plentiful. The company would blast the shale, transport it using a gravity tram, and feed the dry shale into the crushing and grinding machinery.

After processing, the powdered shale and water would be fed into a mixing device called a pugmill to form a wet clay mixture, compressed by an auger, and forced into a de-airing/drying chamber. Then it was extruded as a ribbon of stiff mud and sliced by an automatic wire cutter. Workers loaded this sliced brick and took it to be dried in a tunnel a hundred feet long, then finally kiln fired.

The company produced the kind of bricks used in many Bay Area buildings, including the San Francisco’s Palace Hotel, Standard Oil’s first California refinery and many others. 

In 1907 they were producing 30,000 bricks per day with only 20 men working the plant. By 1921, the branch became its own company. 

Though the Bay Area today is not known for brick manufacturing, the region at this time saw a boom in new brick manufacturers. The Richmond Pressed Brick Company faced fierce competition from competitors Stockton, Carnegie, and many others. You may find bricks stamped with these names at the landfill.

Bricks like the one you are holding now also became symbols of profound inequality, as markers of Berkeley’s strongly racially divided landscape. While brick can symbolize the solidity of homes and community, it also represented the exact opposite during this time. Bricks were used to separate communities from one another, making invisible lines visible. 

For example, the gates that frame the entrance of the Claremont Court residential district were made of similar bricks and indicated the entrance of a racially exclusive neighborhood, in which people of color were unable to rent or buy homes. These columns are still visible today, although the central pillar has been removed to facilitate traffic.

This exclusive neighborhood was created by Duncan McDuffie in 1905 and used racially restrictive deeds in order to maintain a population of “pure Caucasian blood,” only allowing single-family homes to be built in the area and prohibiting the operation of businesses. This ensured the racial homogeneity of Claremont Court, in particular because Japanese, Chinese and Irish Catholic inhabitants often set up businesses like saloons or laundromats in or near their homes. 

Of course, exceptions to this clause were granted for white residents, such as the Place Sisters, who were granted in 1912 the authorization to create a private school for minors in the area, under the condition that “no children of African, Mongolian or Asiatic descent shall be admitted to said school.” 

Unfortunately, this was a common practice; from 1889 to 1966, several communities in Berkeley advertised for racially restrictive housing, with Berkeley’s Park 1912 pamphlet showcasing its exclusion of “Asiatics or Negroes.” 

 Residential segregation was further exacerbated by the creation of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, a federal organization meant to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosures during the Depression. 

To avoid lending to borrowers who might default, the HOLC produced maps of 250 cities around the United States between 1935 and 1940 to categorize lending “risk” levels from letters “A: best” labeled with green to “D: hazardous” labeled with red. This system became known as redlining. In practice, these maps were used by banks to legally discriminate against ethnic and racial minorities through selective lending practices. Another government entity, the Federal Housing Administration introduced in 1940, also issued mortgages only to white families seeking suburban homes in order to boost home ownership.

While these practices were common throughout the US, Berkeley effectively pioneered the use of exclusionary zoning.  Starting from 1916, zoning codes prohibited the building of apartments and duplexes in certain neighborhoods, creating enclaves of single-family homes which were often restricted by covenant or lending practices to White people. By reducing the mixing of incomes, these ordinances reduced the mixing of races as well.

The city’s divided residential landscape was reflected in neighborhood schools, which remained highly segregated until busing began in 1968.

UC Berkeley itself wasn’t officially segregated, yet student housing in the area was subject to the same racially constraining practices. This exacerbated the struggle of students from minority groups to obtain housing nearby and to attend classes.  

Discarded bricks like the one you are holding were used for almost 30 years to build foundations for informal homes right here at the Bulb. If you see patios or other designed structures made of bricks at the Bulb, they were probably made by people who for a time found sanctuary at the Bulb when they could not afford housing in the Bay Area. Unhoused people no longer live at the Bulb, but for decades a community that ranged from a handful to more than 60 people lived here until they were evicted from the Bulb in 2014. 

Development of modern building materials and building codes, cheaper imported bricks, the Great Depression, and falling brick prices contributed to the demise of the brick industry in the area.

The Richmond Pressed Brick company held on longest, with the last kiln closing in 1965. One of the kilns has been preserved, and can be found in Richmond today. The old location of the Richmond Pressed Brick is now home to the Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline park, located next to the upscale condos of Brickyard Cove lane. 

As bricks became obsolete, buildings were demolished and bricks were among the materials used to fill the bay, contributing to the creation of the Albany landfill.  Because the landfill was not fully capped, the bricks remain a visible testament to histories of the building and segregation of communities.

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Header image: Redlining map of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, San Leandro, Piedmont, Emeryville, and Albany. (Courtesy of University of Maryland’s T-Races project.)

For further reading:

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “The Case for Reparations.” The Atlantic. February 25, 2021. Accessed February 24, 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/.

Danis, Ann. Dissertation. Landscapes of Inequality: Creative Approaches to Engaged Research. Dissertation, eScholarship, 2020. Accessed February 28, 2021. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/85k8129q#author.

Dietrich, Waldemar Fenn. The Clay Resources and the Ceramic Industry of California. Sacramento, California: California State Printing Office, 1928.

Lorey, Maya Tulip. “A History  of Residential Segregation in Berkeley, California, 1878-1960.” School Info System. 2013. Accessed February 27, 2021.

Moore, Eli, Nicole Montojo, and Nicole Mauri. “Roots, Race, & Place: A History of Racially Exclusionary Housing in the San Francisco Bay Area.” Roots, Race, & Place | Othering & Belonging Institute. October 01, 2019. Accessed February 12, 2021. https://belonging.berkeley.edu/rootsraceplace.

Mosier, Dan L. “Los Angeles Pressed Brick Company, Richmond Pressed Brick Company, United Materials Company, United Materials and Richmond Brick Company, Ltd.” California Bricks. Last modified 2007. Accessed March 1, 2021. http://calbricks.netfirms.com/brick.richmondpbcobm.html.

Orenstein, Natalie. “A Radical Decision, an Unfinished Legacy.” BerkeleySide. October 16, 2018. Accessed February 17, 2021. https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/10/16/a-radical-decision-an-unfinished-legacy.

Potdar, Priyanka. Vimeo. January 12, 2021. Accessed February 27, 2021. https://vimeo.com/123595731.

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Stadtman, Verne A. “Berkeley Buildings and Landmarks.” BAHA : U.C. Berkeley Buildings and Landmarks. Accessed February 28, 2021. http://berkeleyheritage.com/1967_UC_Berkeley_Buildings.html

 “Claremont Court Gates.” Berkeley Historical Plaque Project. 2009. Accessed February 26, 2021. https://berkeleyplaques.org/plaque/claremont-court-gates/.

 “BRICKMAKING in the USA: A BRIEF HISTORY.” Brickmaking History. FYI World Media, 2005. Last modified 2005. Accessed March 1, 2021. http://brickcollecting.com/history.htm.

National Archives and Records Administration, and N/A N/A. San Francisco Earthquake, 1906. National Archives, 2020. Accessed 2021. https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/sf.

Swackhamer, Barry. “Clay, Kilns & Brick: Brickyard Cove • Ferry Point Loop • San Francisco Bay Trail,” 2016. Accessed February 28, 2021. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=94739.

———. “Brief History of Brickmaking in California.” California Bricks. Last modified 2003. Accessed March 1, 2021. http://calbricks.netfirms.com/brickhistory.html. 

 “50th Anniversary of Berkeley’s Pioneering Busing Plan for School Integration: Berkeley Unified School District.” Berkeley Public Schools. August 26, 2019. Accessed February 20, 2021. https://www.berkeleyschools.net/2018/12/50th-anniversary-of-berkeleys-pioneering-busing-plan-for-school-integration/.

Monument to Bricks

Bricks are complicated. In the Bay Area, bricks can symbolize rebuilding of communities, but they can also symbolize hatred. With our monument, we reveal the story of the bricks here at the Bulb, beneath your feet. Our monument is comprised of three structures which point towards important locations in the Bay Area that reveal the history of this material. As you stand in the middle of these monuments, we created a suggestion of an enclosed space. To emphasize the physical weight of existing brick at the Bulb, we decided to flip the traditional brick wall into an inverted brick wall where the strength comes from the joints instead of the brick. This contrast between strong and delicate relates to the complex nature of bricks – because although bricks mean homes to some, they mean division to others. The ability to remove and insert bricks between the joints highlights this inversion. The Artivive was intended to further augment the views within each brick “chamber.”

The monument hosts three separate viewing frames, marked with small black replicas of different parts of the brick-making process. When you are at the Bulb, if you scan the frames with the Artivive app on your phone, a short animation will play. 

You can see animations here by clicking on the images of the viewing frames.