Encyclopedia Dubuque
"Encyclopedia Dubuque is the online authority for all things Dubuque, written by the people who know the city best.”
Marshall Cohen—researcher and producer, CNN
Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
HEIM BRICK COMPANY
HEIM BRICK COMPANY. One of Dubuque's premier BRICK MANUFACTURING companies. In 1880, following the death of his father, John Heim and his mother converted their pottery business into a brickyard at 32nd and Central STREETS. The firm employed sixty to seventy-five workers including jail inmates who worked with a ball and chain attached to a leg. In 1911 the Heim Brick Yards had been in business forty-four years. The company included two yards, comprising forty acres of land, and employed forty men. The kilns had the capacity of manufacturing 50,000 brick per day.
Workers dug the clay from the ground and carried it to a pit. The clay was mixed with water by a mixing shaft being turned by teams of horses. The wet clay was hand molded into bricks and carried to level ground to dry. The drying process, called "edging," often relied on children who earned ten cents per hour to turn the bricks. The semi-dry bricks were placed in covered corridors called "alleys" to continue drying. The final drying was carried out in kilns in which the heat gave the bricks their reddish color.
Heim brick was used in the construction of WASHINGTON MIDDLE SCHOOL, SACRED HEART CHURCH, and HOLY GHOST CHURCH. Brick produced by the company was sold within four hundred miles of Dubuque.A building slowdown occurred during the 1920s. The economic depression of the 1930s caused the company to fail.
