The Greenstone Apartments, located at 1116 Poplar was built in 1925 using stone salvaged from a home that had occupied the site since 1890.
Photo from Memphis Heritage files.
Brick is the second of the early masonry types to be used in Tennessee. Unlike the extraction of stone, brick-making requires a technological process to reach its final form. The primary ingredient in brick is clay, which is most often found in deposits in lowlands or river valleys. Clay is soft and may be supplemented with a binder; early brick often had straw as a binder. The clay is packed into molds and set aside to dry and stiffen; in this form, the brick is called 'green.'After an appropriate time period, the green bricks are removed from the molds and are stacked in a kiln to be fired. The intensity of the heat and duration of firing determine the strength and durability of the brick. The process is similar to baking bread; a brick has a protective outer layer, or crust, with a softer interior. (Modern brick-making techniques now result in more uniformly hard bricks.) It is important to remember that when the exterior crust of historic (pre-20th-century) brick work is damaged or removed, the brick can rapidly deteriorate.
This alone is an important reason not to sandblast, as sandblasting removes the crust and reduces the life expectancy of the brick. The colors found in bricks are the result of minerals in the clay deposits. When fired, the minerals go through a transformation to produce reds, yellows, and even purples. Bricks are produced for a variety of applications in the building industry. 'Soft-fired,' or 'common' bricks make up the cores of walls and exposed secondary facades. 'Hard-fired'or 'face' brick is used on principal facades and surfaces where a crisp, durable image is desired. 'Exploded' brick contains water intentionally mixed with the clay and is fired at very high temperatures, causing the brick to fracture during the firing process, giving the outer surface a hard-fired but broken surface. It is often seen in Tudor-style homes built in the 1920s. (The William P. Metcalf house, located at 752 South McLean Blvd. and featured on the Central Gardens Home tour has this kind of brick.) Brick may also be finished with a glazed surface to provide a sanitary, impervious surface for use in areas of food production such as meat processing plants and creameries. Yellow brick is often called "creamery brick." Brick should never be sandblasted or painted.