I know we talk a lot about things like lampshades and color and knick-knacks, but we designers have an education in art history, or architecture, or something like that. In my case, it was art history, and my advisor was actually an architect. So we are going to geek out about masonry today.

One of the ideas we covered in architectural history, climactic adaptation in the U.S. of traditional European forms, was of great interest to me, being from Virginia. An example of this is that chimneys in the south were placed on the outside of the house, because you still needed to cook in summer, and on the inside of the house in the north, because it was far colder there and it helped keep the heat in the house. Fall comes to Maine in August, whereas it is still Satan’s front porch in October in Georgia. Makes sense, right?

The more you know, the more you see. And I’m going to teach you something today so similarly simple, you will never un-see it. What we are going to talk about today is brick bond, or the pattern in which bricks are laid so the wall is sturdy.

Brick bond is everywhere once you see it. The above photo is a mid-century building at my kids’ school. This wall is built to last. And this retaining wall at Mount Vernon has an important job! It is retaining! So it needs to be sturdy. And another wall just around in my neighborhood, early 20th century version.

When you look at these walls, note the short pieces. Those are the “headers,” and the longer pieces are the “stretchers.” Importantly, the headers are really just the ends of the bricks, not actually short pieces. They are placed perpendicularly, and that creates enough tension and cantilevering to hold up the wall.

As it happens, I am back in Virginia and live in Alexandria, which is the sort of 18^th-century town where you are sitting in the doctor’s office waiting room, and you see a wall like this:

(Just make sure you don’t freak out the other patients taking photos. Even “I’m writing a blog post about bricks” is better than nothing at all.)

What you are looking at is a real, old, brick wall, not a veneer. I know this not just because the bricks look old and crumbly; people use old crumbly bricks all the time to achieve an old look. The giveaway is those headers.

Or in a restaurant, which to your left will be this and to your right, this other one, which is new:

But wait! This is in the same space! How do you know if is one old and one new? It even has the iron stars!

The dead giveaway of a brick veneer, or in other words a newer wall with something behind the bricks, is that it will have no headers. (The exception to this is chimneys, which have short enough width that they didn’t need to worry about sagging or toppling.) This wall on the right was in the same restaurant, and is very well done, but we know it’s new because of the bond.

Those first examples I gave are examples of common bond—one layer of headers to several layers of stretchers—and used fewer bricks, so it is cheaper. They go on the sides and the backs of a building, walls nobody sees. The number of stretcher rows varies, but is pretty much never more than 10 rows, at least in buildings that are still standing. Remember, the whole purpose is structure, and when you go too cheap, it breaks. This was just as true in 18^th-century bricklaying as it is with a modern big box store faucet with plastic parts.

So you can see on this building in Dupont Circle, there is common bond on the side of the building, and a different pattern on the front more like the subway tile we are used to—a complete veneer. That became more common in the 19th century.

But the pattern we see on 18th-century buildings tends to be common on the sides, and a more decorative pattern on the front: short, long, short, long. That pattern is called Flemish bond, and was considered fancy, because it used far more bricks.

The whole purpose of using Flemish bond on the house was to display your wealth, but we are frugal sensible Americans, so common bond on the sides and back, naturally. As you walk around any old town, there are oodles of examples of this.

And do we all know about the window tax? Houses were taxed on number of windows facing the street, so when you see a house with lots of front windows and Flemish bond all the way around, that dude was a baller. This, for example, is Lord Fairfax’s house, but even he had common bond on the side. But behold, the thin mortar, the limestone foundation, swoon!

This pattern became popular also in the 20^th century with various Colonial revivals, so note on my former house built in 1986, the fancy brickwork used to denote a fealty to tradition, but it’s really a veneer over the structural wall. (You also get a bonus pic of Winston as a puppy.)

This becomes a bit of a guessing game in places such as Alexandria, where historic preservation and awareness leads builders to make things look like they are old.

There is another bond, English bond, and it is very rarely seen in the U.S., so I am using a stock photo from the internet, above, rather than my own photo. That is one row of headers followed by one row of stretchers. I don’t know why it wasn’t popular here other than, maybe, you know, the Revolution?

At any rate, I hope you enjoyed this short discussion. Impress your friends as you go poking around old neighborhoods with your architectural knowledge! We’ll be back to stuff like lampshades next week, but I can’t promise not to geek out over construction again soon.