Memories from the Simons Brick Co.

Simons Brick Co. Picture from usgwarchives.net

View of part of the flooded clay pit of the Simons Brick Company in Santa Monica, 1939.
The power conveyor carried raw clay from the pit up to the plant. Courtesy of the
Santa Monica Public Library Image Archives, City Collection. From http://www.calbricks.netfirms.com/brick.simonssm.html

¨The Simons brothers simply began to build barrack-like housing adjacent to the deep pit where workers mined the reddish clay good for molding into bricks. By the late spring of 1907, the newly christened Mexican Village of Simons (...) had become a fully engaged brick-making company town, turning out as many as 160,000 bricks a day.(...) Built of rough-hewn lumber, the houses stood in worked out clay deposits. Houses had no foundations: moisture seeped upwards and invaded in the winter. The houses had no electricity, gas, or plumbing; electricity did not arrive in some until the 1930s. Newspapers covered the interior walls of many (all the houses were single-wall construction) as makeshift wallpaper.¨

From Whitewashed Adobe. By William Deverell. Chapter ¨The color of brickwork is brown¨. California, 2004