author
Philadelphia & Boston Face Brick Co.
A late-19th-century brick maker turned its catalog into a surprisingly vivid design book, filled with ornamental fireplace mantels, arches, and other architectural details. The result is both a sales piece and a snapshot of how decorative brickwork was marketed in its day.
1 Audiobook
Sketchbook of the Philadelphia & Boston Face Brick Co.
by Philadelphia & Boston Face Brick Co.
About the author
Published under the name of a company rather than an individual writer, Sketchbook of the Philadelphia & Boston Face Brick Co. comes from a business that specialized in face brick and ornamental brickwork. The surviving editions present the firm as an established maker of decorative building materials, especially for fireplaces, doorways, chimneys, panels, and other architectural features.
The book itself reads like a blend of pattern book and advertisement. It showcases designs prepared for the company, including work attributed in the text to a well-known Boston architect, and uses drawings and photographs to demonstrate how molded brick could be both practical and stylish.
Today, the company is remembered mainly through this handsome trade publication and related archival records. For modern readers, it offers a useful glimpse into American building taste, marketing, and domestic design in the 1890s and early 1900s.