S AVANNAH GREY BRICKS

Produced at several different locations from a distinctive strand of Georgia clay, the Savannah grey brick is the subtly-hued vein that connects the nation’s first railroad, the construction of Fort Pulaski, automobile magnate Henry Ford, and mid-20th-century suburban development as it runs through the long, complicated course of this city’s history.

Millions of them were made, and much of that by slave labor, but their connection to the city dates back to the 1730s, almost 20 years before slavery was legal in the colony. It was in those early years, when Gen. James E. Oglethorpe was still in command, that a layer of iron-carbonate clay was discovered along the bluff of the Savannah River, adjacent to Trustees Garden. The first Savannah bricks, long before the term Savannah greys came into vogue, were baked in ovens there.

By the late 1790s, production had shifted some three miles upriver to a small, struggling plantation. First deeded to Joseph Ottolenghe in 1750, it was then called Exon, and was likely planted in mulberry trees. Ottolenghe was for a brief time in charge of the colony’s silk industry.

In 1763, the plantation came into the possession of Capt. Patrick Mackay. Its name was also changed, to the Hermitage. In 1798, after several ownership changes caused by the uncertainties of the Revolutionary War, the Hermitage was purchased by Samuel Wall. Less than a year later, he put it up for sale. His advertisement in the Georgia Gazette turned out to be a harbinger of the plantation’s future: “If not sold within eight days, advantageous terms will be given to any person,

well recommended, who is well acquainted with the making of bricks, having eight or ten hands to carry on that business at the Hermitage, having good clay and large bodies of wood contiguous to it.”

Eventually, in 1815, William I. Scott bought the Hermitage for $1,500. But, that transaction was actually made for Scott’s good friend Henry McAlpin, a recent Scottish immigrant who was not yet a citizen, and who thus could not legally own land in Georgia. Soon McAlpin, with the assistance of Scott, expanded the size of the Hermitage to more than 200 acres.

An 1819 map of the property showed that it was not the typical Savannah River rice plantation, but was rather an industrial complex with some fields for cultivation, along with a saw mill, clay pits, brick kilns and wharfs. McAlpin was thus perfectly poised to take advantage of a business opportunity that arose out of a Savannah tragedy, the fire of 1820.

It began at 2 a.m. on Jan. 11 in a livery stable near City Market, burned until 2 p.m., and consumed a huge swath of downtown. From Jefferson Street to Abercorn Street, and from Broughton Street to Bay Street, virtually every house was destroyed. In all, an estimated 400 buildings went up in smoke.

Ramsey Khalidi, president of Southern Pine Company, stands in front of pallets of Savannah Grey bricks in the storage yard.

Above, the main house at the Hermitage, circa 1907. Below, slave cabins at the Hermitage, 1935, (Library of Congress/Walker Evans)

A city ordinance, passed a short time later, mandated that subsequent downtown construction was to be of brick, rather than wood. It thus got real busy at the Hermitage.

The brick-making process called for the distinctive clay to be mixed with sand and then pressed into wooden molds. Once dried, the bricks were stacked in one of the two massive Hermitage kilns and fired, and from there taken to the wharfs and sent downriver. To keep up those kilns running at maximum capacity and maximum speed, McAlpin built the first railroad in the United States.

Pulled by horses, the railroad stretched on iron rails between the kilns. It carried a large hut, or house, with a pitched roof. Securely based on a four-wheeled platform, this contraption was placed over the kiln while it was being filled with bricks, and removed when the kiln was fired.

The bricks, when they came out of the kilns, did so in different hues, generally ranging from light brown to salmon. That variation depended on the amount of sand mixed in, the amount of iron present in the clay, the temperature in the kiln, the positioning of bricks, and the length of time the kiln was fired. There were also differences in size, although a good general description would be two inches in height, four inches in width and eight inches in length.

The Savannah greys, though not uniform, soon became ubiquitous. F rom the reconstruction after the fire of 1820, through several subsequent antebellum expansions of the city boundaries, Savannah greys went into an estimated 1,000 buildings in downtown Savannah. Those projects included the U.S. Custom H o use, Massie Common School, the two Central of Georgia R ailr oad arches over Boundary Street, Trinity United Methodist Church, F ir st African Baptist Church, hundreds of private residences, and, of course, the H er mitage, the storied home H enr y Mc Alpin built just off the Savannah R iv er.

Not all of thos e Savannah greys came from McAlpin’s plantation. Some of the other sources included: • South Carolina. A May of 1843 advertisement in the Savannah Daily Rep ublican listed “35,000 hard grey bricks” being landed from a schooner and being sold at 150 Bay St. • The Eastside. A June of 1846 advertisement in the Savannah Daily Rep ublican listed “grey and hard brown bricks for sale to suit purchasers. Appl y at Brickyard on the Thunderbolt R o ad, or to H. Ganahl.” A later ad mentioned that this brickyard was “one and a half miles” from Savannah. • The Ogeechee Canal. A January of 1851 article in the Savannah Daily Rep ublican touted the recent accomplishments of the Savannah Patent Brick Co. I ts lo cation near a lock afforded “clay of a superior quality” and “an ample supply of firewood.” The addition of this operation was welcomed by the editor because the demand for bricks was “immense.”

Still, the Hermitage remained the acknowledged leader in the industry, even after the 1851 death of Henry McAlpin. With the business in the hands of his sons, the power and prestige of the Hermitage was clearly visible in a June of 1856 advertisement in the Savannah Georgian and Journal that boasted of “1,000,000 grey bricks, best quality, for sale. Apply to A. (Angus) McAlpin & Bros. Williamson’s buildings.”

A million bricks seems like an astonishing number, until it’s placed in the context of a single Savannah construction project, that of Fort Pulaski, which started in 1829, was completed in 1847, and required the purchase of some 25 million bricks. Most of the bricks were Savannah greys kilned at the H er mitage, but rose-red bricks, thought to be harder, were shipped down from Maryland and V ir ginia and placed in arches and embrasures.

But Pulaski’s brick walls, though they ranged from 5-feet to 11-feet thick, did not deter Union rifled artillery in 1862, and, after N or thern soldiers plundered the H er mitage plantation in 1864, the McAlpin family

decided to make its home downtown.

An April of 1867 advertisement in the Savannah Daily News and Herald summed up the plantation’s fate: “Pasturage – for stock of all descriptions, at the Hermitage, three miles from the city. Also, for let or lease the Brick Yards attached to same, with two permanent kilns, capacity 200,000 bricks each, and clay inexhaustible.”

Another business, the Lovell Brick Co., located on Louisville Road, manufactured Savannah greys from 1885 to 1910. With its closure, production of the traditional-style Savannah greys came to an end. But, they would eventually make a couple of comebacks.

In the mid-1930s, as the Civilian Conservation Corps was restoring Fort Pulaski, the call went out for 200,000 Savannah greys, necessary to repair crumbling sections. During that same era, attention was focused on the old Hermitage plantation as well.

The McAlpin family made a brief return to the mansion in the 1890s, but after a few years returned for good to their home on Orleans Square. In 1933, descendants of the slaves that had worked the kilns still lived in what had been the slave quarters, matching rows of small, simple three-room houses made of Savannah grey bricks. Famed WPA photographer Walker Evans took photographs of a line of these cabins.

O ther structures, including the kitchen, smoke house, stables, hospital and the long-unused brick kilns, were still standing, but would not be for long. By F e b. 28, 1935, the land had been purchased by the Savannah Ports A uthor ity, and several months later was transferred to the Union Bag and Paper Corp. of Georgia. Construction of a paper mill quickly followed.

A s for the H er mitage, the stately Greek R e vival home of the McAlpin family for some four decades, H enr y F or d purchased it in 1935 for $10,000. A brief effort to save it from destruction, headlined by Secretary of the I n terior H ar old L. I c kes, failed, and the mansion was disassembled and moved to F or d’s estate in Bryan County. I n 1936-38, a new, r estyled Greek R e vival mansion was built with those old Savannah greys, and became the residence for F or d and his wife when they wintered in the area.

In the 1950s , interest in Savannah greys again spiked, sparked by their availability as antebellum buildings downtown were being demolished. Local auto dealer Dale Critz built a home on Abercorn Street using bricks taken from the old Savannah Theatre. A number of homes in the circa 1950-60 Fairway Oaks – Greenview Subdivision were made with Savannah greys.

Another cache, this one in 1981 of 25,000 Savannah greys razed from a building in the police barracks, sold for $51 per thousand. By 1982, when the old TPA garage on Johnson Square was dismantled grey brick by grey brick, the going rate was $1,500 per thousand.

Earlier this year, when Ramsey Khalidi, owner of Southern Pine Co., put 10,000 Savannah greys up for sale, the asking price had gone up considerably, as in $3 to $4 per brick. “I’ve been collecting these for years,” said Khalidi, who doesn’t just talk about recycling, he lives it. His headquarters, the circa-1920s old Star Laundry on East 35th Street, has stacks of rescued lumber inside and stacks of Savannah greys outside in a rear courtyard.

Khalidi decided to sell the 10,000 Savannah greys to a familiar customer, Fort Pulaski. They will be used for restructure and replacement throughout the fortification. The price? $2.50 a brick. “They’re a public, nonprofit. It was the right thing to do,” said Khalidi.

Above, a stack of Savannah grey bricks. Below, a house made of Savannah grey bricks at 3208 Abercorn Street. The bricks were taken from the old Savnnah Theatre.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; “Behind the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery,” by John Michael Vlach; “Savannah River Plantations: Photographs From the Collection of the Georgia Historical Society,” by Frank T. Wheeler; “The Hermitage Plantation,” by the Savannah Unit of the Georgia Writers’ Project, Work Projects Administration in Georgia, Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. 27; “A Biography of James Wallace McAlpin,” by Brett M. Campbell, part of the Savannah Biographies held at the Special Collections of Lane Library of Armstrong State University; editions of the Savannah Daily Republican, Savannah Georgian and Journal and Savannah Daily News and Herald pulled from savnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu; National Historic Register Nomination Form for Fairway Oaks – Greenview subdivisions; www.southernpinecompany.com; www. savannahga.gov; www.nps.gov; www.loc.gov; fordplantation.com.