Medora Brick Company

The Medora Brick Company is a defunct brick factory located in Indiana.

History

The Medora Shale Brick Company was formally organized on July 8, 1904, with its articles of association filed on July 15 and recorded on August 2. ¹ The initial board of directors included William T. Branaman, Josiah L. Hunsucker, Cornelius V. Trautman, John H. Sutton, and George W. Zollman.

The company selected a site near Medora along the Baltimore & Ohio Southwestern Railroad line for its brick factory. Production began with six beehive kilns ⁹ in 1910, ⁶ utilizing a nearby abundant and accessible shale supply. ^{1 9} Over time, the facility grew to include 12 domed brick kilns, long-covered storage sheds, a small office, a brick-drying building, and several ponds, as the plant required 10,000 gallons of water daily.

Initially, the factory’s bricks were primarily used for street paving. ¹ This practice traced back to Mordecai Levi, who pioneered the use of brick for paving by replacing a gravel and dirt roadway on Summers Street in Charleston, West Virginia, with brick in 1870. ² By 1873, he had paved an entire block. Bricks became a preferred material for improving roads, offering durability, better sanitation, and resilience against weather. Vitrified bricks were especially valued for their glazed surfaces, which resisted moisture and chemical damage.

At Medora, each paving brick featured a raised ⅛-inch dimple about one inch from each end. ⁹ This design was intentional, helping to prevent shod horses from slipping on the bricks.

In the early 1900s, there were approximately 52 brick-making companies in Indiana. ⁹ By 1920, Indiana ranked seventh in the United States for clay product manufacturing for agriculture, street paving, and building construction. ^{6 9}

On March 29, 1921, a fire destroyed the drying house at the brick plant. ⁴ Approximately 150 carloads of bricks were inside at the time. Additionally, 10 to 12 tunnels were damaged and required reconstruction.

Because of an economic slowdown, the Medora Shale Brick Company declared bankruptcy in the early 1920s and closed operations. ¹ On April 18, 1923, Joseph Robertson and John W. Heller of Brownstown purchased the company at auction for $30,000, renaming it the Medora Brick Company. ³ Both were involved in the Jackson Brick & Hollow Ware Company, which produced hollow drainage tiles. ¹ Robertson, serving as president of both companies, oversaw operations until his death in 1944, after which James P. Heller, John W. Heller’s son, assumed leadership.

Under new ownership, the Medora plant transitioned from producing street pavers to manufacturing wall bricks for commercial buildings in 1925. ¹ While bricks were still used for paving roads, their popularity declined as asphalt and concrete became more common alternatives.

By the 1970s, the growth of plastic piping affected the drainage tile market, leading to the closure of the Jackson Brick & Hollow Ware Company in Brownstown. The Medora plant remained the only operation. Outdated production methods, such as labor-intensive, hand-formed brick-making techniques, contributed to high production costs. ⁹ Additionally, newer brick-making technologies—such as automated brick presses, tunnel kilns, and gas energy—along with stricter environmental regulations on coal burning and kiln emissions, made it increasingly difficult for Medora to compete.

On November 25, 1990, the company announced its pending closure, with the Medora brick factory vacated on January 31, 1992. ^{8 9}

Troy Darkis, a former employee, purchased the plant and much of the surrounding nine acres in 1993. ^{1 7} Two tracts were sold for residential use, and over time, some of the buildings were removed to reduce the site’s exposure to property taxes. This included two beehive kilns, two chimney stacks, a covered rail siding structure, and a shale processing and brick-forming building. ⁹ In December 2017, Darkis transferred the remainder of the brick plant to the nonprofit Save the Medora Brick Plant organization, which performed cleanup and stabilization work at the site. ^{1 8 9}

Production

Initially, shale used for brick production was quarried near the plant and transported by horse-drawn wagons. ¹ Steam shovels and trucks later replaced this method. After 1938, raw materials were trucked in from a site one mile north of Medora.

The plant’s kilns, approximately 30 feet in diameter, had walls 8 feet high and 24 inches thick, with self-supporting domes. ^{1 9} Each kiln could process 72,000 to 73,000 bricks per firing, yielding about 70,000 saleable bricks due to a 3–5% loss. Firing required roughly one pound of coal per brick.

Bricks were stacked 30 high in the kiln. ^{1 9} The kiln doors were sealed and covered with mud before firing began. The dome’s 6 to 8-inch opening was capped with a steel plate, and the distance from the opening to the top of the brick stack was measured to track the process. After several days of heating, the bricks were deemed ready when the stack settled by 12½ inches.

Brick plant employees, known as tossers and setters, transported bricks in and out of the kilns using specially designed, balanced wheelbarrows. ⁹ Each wheelbarrow held 100 bricks—50 stacked on each side. Workers typically loaded three to five wheelbarrows at a time. While the total weight of the bricks was about 400 pounds, the wheelbarrow’s design and balance reduced the load on the worker’s hands to approximately 50 pounds. Wheelers would push the wheelbarrows down ramps, moving the bricks from the kilns to the cooling and storage areas. The standard workload for each employee was 90 wheelbarrows per day, both loaded and unloaded.

Initially, paving bricks were shipped by railroad to sites across the Midwest. ⁹ However, as business expanded and production shifted to face bricks, deliveries were made directly to construction sites by truck.

The factory had a production capacity of up to 54,000 bricks per day. ^{1 9} The production process, from quarrying to delivering finished bricks, took approximately 21 days.

Use

Many of these bricks were used in campus buildings at Purdue University, the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville, and others. ¹

In 1913, a single brick was sent by Parcel Post to the Coliseum in Chicago for the Clay Products Exposition, held from February 26 to March 8. ⁵ It was part of a shipment of 25,000 bricks used to construct a brick house during the event. After the exposition, the house was given away and later reconstructed.

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Sources

1. Graves, Steve. “History.” Medora Brick Plant.
2. Gavin, Mike. “The First Brick Road: How Brick Streets Were Laid in the Late 1800s and Early 1900s.” Gavin Historical Bricks, 28 Nov. 2016.
3. “Medora Brick Plant to be Operated.” Jackson County Banner, 18 Apr. 1923, p. 1.
4. “Medora Brick Plant Suffers Fire Loss.” Jackson County Banner, 30 Mar. 1921, p. 1.
5. “Brick House Sent By Mail.” Bedford Daily Mail, 22 Feb. 1913, p. 6.
6. “Brick plant marker to be dedicated.” Jackson County Banner, 21 Apr. 2008, p. 4.
7. “Real Estate Transfers.” Jackson County Banner, 13 Jul. 1993, p. 7.
8. Woods, Aubrey. “Medora Brick Plant restoration efforts moving forward.” The Tribune, 2 Jun. 2018.
9. Ellery, Peter J. “Medora Brick Plant.” Historic American Landscapes Survey, Jul. 2017.