PATTERNED BRICKWORK

DECORATIVE MASONRY IN EARLY HOUSES ON THE EASTERN SEABOARD.

Vermont’s Martin Chittenden House (see previous story) once had a twin, built several miles away along the river for Martin’s brother Noah Chittenden; it burned down in 1885. Both houses boasted “checkerboard brickwork” in their end walls, laid in patterned Flemish bond. Flemish checker is the most common form of patterned brickwork.

Extant examples of decorative, patterned brickwork occur between North Carolina and Connecticut—with a concentration of houses, built generally by Quakers between 1680 and 1830, in southwestern New Jersey. The National Register nomination for remaining houses called the brickwork “the first recognizable ‘architecture of refinement’ in New Jersey.” Building in brick, rather than wood, was already a “best sort” of architecture; patterns made the brickwork even more refined—and expensive. Roots of the practice are in England, specifically Tudor England.

A commonality is the use of Flemish diagonal bond—a complex pattern of stretcher courses alternating with courses of one or two stretchers between headers, at various offsets so that, over ten courses, a diamond-shaped or diaper pattern appears. Further refinement includes the bricklayer working build-date, and even owners’ initials, into the pattern. Dickinson House, 1754 Perhaps the most famous, if not the most complex, patterned brickwork in New Jersey is found on the John and Mary Dickinson House of Alloway Township in Salem County, built in 1754 (extant). With a large number of vitrified bricks, it displays a symmetrical pattern of diamonds connected with branching diagonals. The vitrified headers were placed stepwise in a wall of Flemish bond. The mason included the initials of the owners and the date of construction; in the numerals, he turned the headers for additional interest. Photo taken in 1936 by Nathaniel R. Ewan, for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS).