Recently I received an email from a gentleman living in Florida who had grown up in Monroeville. He asked me about the old brickyards in Monroeville and if I had been out there. He sent me some information about the yards and today seemed like a great day to go take a look. My neighbor and I loaded up our bikes and headed out.
The gentleman who wrote me is currently doing research on the brickyards so this post will most likely grow as more information rolls in. In the meantime here's a brief history from the Trafford Historical Society's website. The brickyard was in operation from 1905 until a fire destroyed the operation in the 1960's. During the time it was in operation the brickyard saw several owners as well as several name changes.
In 1903 E.J. Sweeney purchased 30 acres along with a stone quarry with the intent of building a brickyard. One of the first contracts he won was for 3,000,000 bricks to be used in the construction of the courthouse in Greensburg. A few years later Sweeney sold his business. By 1910 the brickyard was known as the Wynn and Starr Company. By the 1920's the Wynn and Starr Company employed 32 people and was serviced by a spur off the Turtle Creek Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The brickyard is located on the Allegheny County side of Turtle Creek. There are bridge abutments and collapsed piers extant in the creek from this spur.
Henry Wynn died in 1931. After this the brickyard went up for sale and was purchased by Albert Starr who renamed it the Houston-Starr Brickyard. It would be known by this name until the 1940's. At least two different companies operated the brickyard after Houston-Starr in the 1950's. In the 1960's a fire destroyed the brickyard and it shut down for good.
The Trafford Historical Society link can be found here along with vintage photos of the brickyard. Brickyard
And here are my photos from today.
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| A couple photos of some of the accidents in the past off the Turtle Creek Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad. |
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| Finding the spur that went over to the brickyard was pretty easy. Apparently this bridge got washed out sometime in the 1980's. The track that remains where the bridge once was has been converted to a rope swing for a swimming hole. |
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| Looking across the creek. It's pretty obvious that a brickyard was located nearby. |
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| A collapsed pier from the spur bridge. |
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| My neighbor Bill out on the track/swing. |
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| The abutment on the Westmoreland County side of the creek. |
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| Looking down Turtle Creek. |
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| After getting across the creek and heading upstream toward the brickyard. The first structure we came across was this old house. |
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| The front room was completely packed with ceramics molds. |
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| Another mostly collapsed structure on the way to the brickyard. |
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| This is the first of the buildings related to the brickyard. |
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| Inside were these massive compressors. We're thinking this was a boiler house for something. They more than likely mined clay here. This might be related to that. |
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| Very intact machinery. |
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| Cooper Bessemer Compressor. |
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| Tank outside of the compressor house. |
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| Another one. |
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| Back side of the compressor house. |
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| Moving on. Next was this big chimney smokestack. |
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| We took a look through the hole. |
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| Looking down. |
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| Looking up. |
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| Part of an old foundation. |
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| The jewel of the site. The kilns!! |
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| Some metal hanging down from the top of the kilns. |
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| The floor of the kiln. |
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| Looking through. |
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| The floor. |
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| Some of the product still sitting in the kiln. Unused bricks. Enough to make you drool. |
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| The wall of the kiln. |
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| An incredible variety of bricks. |
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| Coming out the other end. |
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| Outside of the kilns. We aren't sure what this was. It looks like a smaller kiln. |
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| An arch on the hillside. |
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| Not sure of its function. |
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| A little further down. The ruins of another kiln. |
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| Bottom of the arch. |
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| The outside of the other kiln. |
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| More bricks. |
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| More kiln ruins. |
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| We decided to continue going straight up the brick road to see if we could find a different way out of the site. |
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| At this point we were very high above Turtle Creek. |
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| Next we came across these ruins of an old steam shovel just rusting away in the woods. |
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| The Thew Shovel Company was started by Captain Richard Thew. Thew was a Captain on the great lakes and was in charge of ore ships. In the 1890's steam shovels were operated on tracks. Thew encountered problems unloading his ore and with the help of H.H. Harris built the first Thew Steam Shovel in Cleveland in 1895. |
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| These shovels ran on steel traction tread. |
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| I can't say it enough. It's amazing what you can find in the woods. |
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| Cable still on the spool. |
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| The boom of the shovel laying in the weeds. |
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| Incredible! |
