Walked past an old house downtown with brickwork from the 1920s

I was in Springfield last weekend checking out a job site and took a detour down Maple Street. There's this old house there, must be a hundred years old, and the brickwork on the front porch is still holding up better than most new builds I see. The joints are tight and the pattern is a simple running bond, but the guy who laid it took the time to match the color across batches. You don't see that kind of care anymore, not with crews rushing to finish a wall in a day. Makes me wonder if we've lost something in the push for speed. Has anyone else noticed older jobs lasting way longer than the new stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

rayc387d ago

That bit about matching color across batches caught my eye. I've seen new builds where you can spot the pallet swap clear as day running right down the wall. How do you think the old guys managed that consistency without computers and batch numbers? Was it just better quality control at the supply yard, or did the masons have a trick for blending things on site?

noahbaker7d ago

Interesting way of looking at it. It's like how a really good carpenter can hide a joint in plain sight, or how a cook seasons a dish so you can't pick out the individual spices. I think the old masons just had a slower, more careful rhythm to their work, they'd blend from multiple pallets as they went, no rush to get it done in a day. You ever notice how so many things that are built "perfectly" these days lack that little bit of human adjustment that makes it all flow together?