BRICKYARD BEACHES: Historic Dutchess Junction Mud-Larking

I STILL FIND IT unbelievable, and yet I have I have seen it to know that it exists.

Along the Hudson River there are beaches lined with bricks. Not just a single beach, but an entire coastline, where the molded and hardened clay formed by industrial workers at the turn of the Twentieth Century lay scattered in heavy density.

There are deep red bricks, green algae-covered ones, under-cooked cinnamon brown rectangles, and blocks and crumbles of every shape and size. Some sections of beach are powdered with red pulverized brick sand, but mostly the brickyard beaches lay covered with earthen shards and brick fragments scattered haphazardly amid driftwood, sand, and rock.

Various catalpa trees have long-since sprouted amid the bricks, now bearing healthy umbrages of lush green leaves. Some have even grown up with bricks tightly wedged between its roots.

Ursula and I are dazzled with this constant wonder and awe as we devote a July afternoon to studying and scouring this unique area in the activity I affectionately term “bricking.”

The previous month I stumbled upon this fantastic area when Richie and I, hot and perspiring, were in search of a swim to cool off amid the humidity of late June. We parked in a pull-out along State Route 9-D in southern Fishkill and followed an un-blazed path that pointed towards the Hudson River, unaware of its destination but presumed it led to water. It did, albeit after a mile or so through forest, railway, and thicket. Then our minds were focused exclusively on reprieve from the heat that although I shot several dozen photographs of the brick-lined beach we did not linger. Instead, I resolved to return another time to make sense and survey this strange and surreal scene upon which we entered.

Somewhat aware that the Hudson Valley had a historical role in brickmaking, I contacted Ursula, an acquaintance with long ties to the region who self-describes herself as a “mud-larker.” Coined by the British as a term of occasional endearment for those who scavenge the shores of the Thames during low tide in search of relics or in the 19^th Century artifacts to pawn for food, mud-larking today is more an amusement-hobby akin to treasure hunting. As a kid my grandfather took me to southern Connecticut beaches where my siblings and I collected shells and sea-glass (tide-honed colored glass orbs), so I could relate to Ursula when she described to me this pursuit. Even as we explored together the Brick Beaches of Dutchess Junction Ursula carried a bag in which she collected various pieces of porcelain found along the beach, which she told me she would recycle into mosaics. One fragment was triangular making it ideal for re-use as a sail for a mosaic sail-boating scene. Another rare find bore the insignia of the Hotel Astor of New York City.

Ursula was also a brick-collector, a hobby that www.brickcollecting.com describes as “a crazy hobby, but to find, touch, and own a piece of history can be very rewarding.”

I learned that each brickmaker branded each brick he made with his company name or logo. In the early 1900s there were more than 120 companies producing brick along the Hudson River stretching from Haverstraw in the south to as far north as Mechanicville, north of Troy. The valley’s abundance of clay and its proximity to a major river transport, particularly at a time when major fires in New York City led to stricter building codes seeking fire-proof structure made our region what Julia O’Connor in a 1989 article called “the brickmaking capital of the world.” In Dutchess Junction where we now hike there were once 38 brick companies operating on six miles of coast.

Ursula and I entered the brick beach coastline upon what were once the brickyard of companies owned by William K. Hammond. His name is everywhere in the broken bricks beneath our feet. Some spell out his entire last name, others just his initials, or that of his partnership with a man named Freeman (H & F). Other bricks are emblazed with “HAMMOND2” or “HAMMOND3.” I printed out pages of history on this area’s brickmaking industry prior to our visit but am disappointed that little has been preserved about this once intrepid head of the Hudson River Brickmakers Association despite the many versions of his bricks attesting to his steadfast role in the industry.

A single brick portion we find has the remnants of what we presume were the characters “HAMMOND4.” This #4 label was not featured on the listing and images of known branded bricks posted on the brickcollecting.com website, suggesting that it is a rarity among brick-hunters, what Ursula terms a “holy grail.”

As we walk south along the shore the Hammond collection of bricks are soon intermixed and then usurped by bricks bearing the marks of the Nicholson Brothers brickmakers. This indicates to us that historically we passed from one company’s brickyard to the next.

In reading about brickmaking, I learned that once the clay was harvested, mixed with water, sand, and coal dust, and then molded into shape, each brick was then laid out to dry in the sun. The open expanse of the river coastline that we now walk upon was in centuries-past one continuous brickyard for abundant brickmaking companies.

Workers aimed to have the molded bricks out drying by 10am each morning for a three-hour drying period in the hot noon sun. Then each brick was turned over for an additional two to four hours of a surface dry. Only then were the bricks carefully stacked to facilitate airflow for an additional 2-3 days before being fire-baked in a kiln, and then shipped by boat to markets in New York City or beyond.

The Nicholson brothers stamped their bricks with the emblems “N.B.” as well as the more self-explanatory “N.BROS.” As with Hammond, I could not find biographical material on these brothers. Nor was there any information on Nathaniel and Alonzo Covert, the Covert brothers, for which I located a single brick bearing their brand “COVERT.” I found more promising results for Thomas Aldridge, whose bricks began appearing the further south on the river Ursula and I traveled.

Thomas Aldridge (1818-1892) and his sons owned land in this area, then known as Dutchess Junction, a town strategically placed at the crossroads of two busy railroads, the ND&C and the NYC&HR, not to mention the busy ferry service from Newburgh. His company, Thomas Aldridge Brick and Land Company was also known as Aldridge Brothers & Company which was shortened to ABC for marking bricks. The ABC bricks are very prevalent today, the Aldridge less so but still common.

Ursula and I share both excitement and optimism as we scour over the bricks scattered along the shore. Many are cracked or broken or weathered beyond recognition. Others are covered in sea slime or mud that require rubbing them to expose an identifying brand. When a whole or otherwise redeemable brick is found we set it aside for retrieval on our return trip.

I experience some internal conflict about taking home these discovered historical artifacts rather than leaving them for others to find and share in the joy of discovery – a Leave No Trace wilderness ethic – but I reason there is so many bricks to be found here, and ruin or further deterioration remains a threat if left behind. I also reason that archeologists remove artifacts all the time to preserve them, which in essence is what we too are doing.

It is a passage from George Hutton’s book, The Great Hudson River Brick Industry, that ultimately persuades me that hiking out a few bricks for private use is morally permissible:

“A memorable custom that was common to many of the brickmaking communities was ‘carrying the pail.’ This was the function of children … who would then take their father’s freshly prepared lunch to them … The ‘pail’ was named after the original shape of the container which was a vertical metal cylinder with a bail handle … accompanied by the mythology of a man being able to carry two bricks home in the lunch bucket every day, resulting in fine brick utility sheds, brick veneered house walls, etc.”

Accordingly, in replica of history and custom, I hiked in a plastic pail in which I stored the few keepsake bricks I took home with me.

The Maritime Museum in Kingston and the Connecticut Museum of Mining and Mineral Science both have exhibits on brickmaking. In Haverstraw, where over 40 brickyards were in existence during the 1880s, an entire museum is devoted the craft. All three have salvaged bricks as exhibits.

Within constant view as we explore the Dutchess Junction brickyard beach is the eye-catching and thought-provoking Bannerman’s Castle, that sits on an island, all its own midway in the river. In years past this has been a favorite destination of mine by kayak. Today, I think of its brick construction and speculate that since Francis Bannerman bought the island in 1900 that most likely the materials that led to its construction came from bricks formed here or near here.

The years 1900-1926 when Bannerman was building his castle-looking arsenal to store ammunitions for resale were peak years in the Hudson Valley brickmaking. Ships carrying the bricks past the island to New York City were in abundance. Flagging down a brick-barge to obtaining the construction materials to build the arsenal likely made such construction possible by eliminating the otherwise burdensome material transportation costs. The ease of brick-delivery also likely led Bannerman to give in to his fancy of designing the arsenal with a castle-like appearance (think the low-cost permitted fancier adaptations). Such insights fascinate me as if an elusive piece of the puzzle has suddenly been discovered. This puzzle piece is significant, however, as it links two admittedly obscure but fascinating Hudson River oddities that are within a short kayak paddle of each other: the island arsenal-castle and the brick beaches that likely made its construction affordably possible.

Historical factors including World War I, the saturation of the brick market, failures of the industry to enact cost controls, and the 1928 start of the concrete industry spurring skyscraper construction all led to the demise of brickmaking in the region. What is not explained by the historical factors is why all these bricks were abandoned here forming a perpetual brick beach.

Did the world wars deprive the industry of workers or otherwise cause company insolvency that led to a sudden operational cessation such that the bricks were left drying in the yards? Or were these abandoned bricks that we now find littering the shore of the Hudson the industrial rejects – the “lammies” and “clinkers” unfit for sale?

It is true that most of the bricks, which we hobble over more than a century past their formation, are broken, bloated, curved, or distorted in some way. Perhaps, it was not the passage of time that ruined these bricks, but that time has preserved them in their discarded original state? Maybe the proverb is true that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure?

I think of the porcelain plate shard that Ursula snatched up with plans to repurpose it as the sail of a mosaic sailboat.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so also is intrigue, fascination, marvel and the other words that come to mind as I think of what drew me to return to this brickyard beach. Before the month was out I returned a third time to once more appreciate this hidden wonder, this time by kayak.

An imposing section of tall green sedges marks the end of mine and Ursala’s southward shoreline search.

Soon we will retrace our steps, picking up the chosen collectible bricks that we set aside and place a few keepsakes in my pail. Then we will explore the shoreline to the North of where entered the beach where we find bricks imprinted with ANCHOR, ALDREDGE, ZEIGLER, BROCKWAY, BUDD and MARTIN, but not before we discover near the sedges what I consider to be three rare finds.

At the southernmost part of brick hunt we find a single brick bearing the name “McNAMARA”; another single brick branded with “P.A.N.”; and a third brick with the initials “F.T.”

I learn later that John C. McNamara (born 1850) was an associate of the Covert Brothers Yard, as also of the Anchor Brick Co. John McNamara married the daughter of Francis Timoney in whom the “F.T.” brick refers.

In 1886, Francis Timoney (1831-1902) purchased and consolidated the three Dutchess Junction brickyards south of the Hammond yard.

The P.A.N. brick stands for Pierre A. Northrip (1865-1925), of which little biographical data could be found. Perhaps, the lack of preserved history on the persons that made this place so intriguing to me now is part of the charm that keep the curiosity of this Brickyard Beach so stimulating?

Perhaps it is the search for answers that is as mesmerizing as the insights and results that the search for produces? It is such a thought that inspires me to keep returning here, to keep scanning, and to keep upturning the brickyard “lammies.” Underneath the mud and algae, or on the underside of each brick, are clues as fascinating as this century-old beach covered in brick.

I suppose I too have become a mud-larker.     

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A kayak outfitter, Mike Kelsey is available for guided tours of Dutchess Junction’s brickyard beaches arriving by foot or by paddle.  Contact him at AWAYAdventureGuide@gmail.com.