Each house will have a memory; the characteristics and personalities of different human individuals can be written in the thickness of the walls…
— Pattern 197 Thick Walls, from A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
Walls seem so stalwart and impenetrable, but they inevitably fail us; leaking, cracking, crumbling. After the night rain, we are surprised to wake up to the water in the basement that penetrated the seemingly impenetrable bricks and mortar. We are disappointed, and then, afraid. If the walls will not hold, if the brick is weak, where is the safe place in our world?
When we moved into our dirty brick Chicago bungalow this past fall, we knew we had a few tuckpointing issues. It was right there on our housing inspection—and as soon as we figured out what tuckpointing was, we were going to deal with it.
In prioritizing our long list of things that needed to get done on the house, our rationale was to work from the outside in, except when something on the inside required immediate attention, like the breakdown of the hot water heater. Tuckpointing and repointing seemed to encompass a whole host of outside issues, so tuckpointing was moved to a spring priority.
In 1927 when our bungalow was built, bricks were supplied from local manufacturers that, at the height of brick production in the 1920s, made about 685 million bricks a year. A lot of those bricks were used for the construction of 80,000 bungalows around town. Brick was considered a high-end building material; durable, maintenance free, attractive. The merits of brick are not exactly news. Ask the three little pigs. Ask the wolf. For a wall that withstands huffing and puffing, transgressive trespassers, and the insubstantial present—build it with brick. After 80 plus years though, bricks can start looking a little tired and dingy. A case in point was our own bricks.
The problem can only be solved by a kind of barrier which functions as a barrier which separates, and as a seam which joins, at the same time
—Pattern 243 Sitting Wall, from A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
Here’s a story about a wall that was originally built as a barrier but which came to join people together in opposition to it. I heard this story from a neighbor who knows the stories behind every new building, empty lot, and closed storefront in the 50th ward. In 1993 a wall was built in our neighborhood along Howard Street. One side of Howard is in Evanston, the other side is Chicago. After we had lived in Chicago for a few months, we would say we went to Evanston when we wanted to find a parking space. It was a joke and it was true. The north edge of Evanston was familiar to us in a cleaner, whiter, Minnesota kind of way. Northwestern University is in Evanston. There are two Whole Foods grocery stores in Evanston. It’s easy to recycle. The first few months we lived in Chicago, we often wished we lived in Evanston, but we couldn’t afford it. Housing values for comparable properties were about $100K more in Evanston as compared to West Rogers Park.
Evanston wanted to build a shopping mall on their side of Howard. The Chicago side didn’t want the mall traffic coming into their neighborhood, which was predominantly white. So a wall was built—four blocks long, down the center of Howard Street, from Kedzie to North Francisco avenues, with no interruptions for cars or pedestrians. News stories about the wall controversy noted that according to the 1990 census, the Chicago side, just south of the barrier, was less than 1 percent African American, while the area on the Evanston side was 28 percent black.
Alexander advocates “ambiguous” barriers, such as low sitting walls to subtly mark the division of space while inviting passage through to either side or easy access around. The impenetrable wall on Howard Street was known as “Bernie’s Wall” for 50th ward alderman Bernie Stone who pushed the construction of the wall through the Chicago city council. It was speculated at the time that the wall was built as a racial divide, to keep whites safe on one side and blacks on the other.
The wall didn’t last long. It went up in 1993 and came down by court order in 1994. The memory of the wall proved more enduring than the actual structure.
Walls draw a line, keep us in place, shelter secrets, make good neighbors or incite breakthroughs. Our dirty brick walls are being transformed. First, the old mortar was removed with a pneumatic chisel and grinder. There were several versions of old mortar between our bricks: the original reddish brown mortar that was easily removed with a car key, evidence of high lime content in the mix; then patches of gray cement and a dark brown, nearly black mortar, much harder than the original mortar. According to historic masonry experts, bricks produced before the 1930s are more porous and require a softer, flexible mortar. The old mortar and old bricks work together, expanding and contracting with the weather. The newer mortar patches have been suffocating our old bricks, trapping moisture inside the bricks, causing cracks and water damage.
Pulling a broken brick out of our side wall by hand, our contractor sighed, “There’s a lot of bad mortar in this town.” There are a lot of stories about bad mortar and bad repointing—endless examples of just getting it done, covering it over, using the wrong products, the wrong tools, of doing it all wrong for the wrong reasons; to keep neighbors divided, to keep us all where we belong, so we’re waking up in ten or twenty years to another round of the same dirty bricks, the same crumbling mortar.
Our red-headed Irish masonry foreman growled that he would just as soon sink all the old bricks in Lake Michigan, build with new bricks, and then seal the bricks with a silicone sealer—like a big Ziplock bag. The Czechoslovakian masonry workers were of a completely different opinion—they advocated limestone caps on every surface as though our modest concrete front steps were in need of cosmetic veneers. And the Polish tuckpointers assiduously demonstrated the difference between flat, concave, convex, and grapevine pointing—each lovely in its own right, and which do you prefer boys? The Historic Chicago Bungalow Association recommended researching our house’s original blueprints to determine if a mortar color and style had been specified so we could recreate the builder’s original intention. Neighbors wanted to know when the grinding and dust would abate. We wondered why we ever got into this project in the first place.
What will be written in our repointed brick walls? Will the memory serve as more than a reminder of division? Of a divide of materials and process and history?
After power washing, the bricks we thought were a dark maroon are orange, like a new day after a hard night rain that tests the sturdy walls with the clashing opinions of historical purists and an international array of masons. A surprising bright orange.
Photo by Flickr user Caveman 92223
Paul M Davis
12 Comments
Polly
I love this piece, the deft way it moves between the personal and political implications of the wall in our lives. Thanks so much!
04 Jun 2010 04:06 am
ian
"After we had lived in Chicago for a few months, we would say we went to Evanston when we wanted to find a parking space. " Love. It. I also had no idea that Chicago and Evanston had a relationship like East//West Berlin for a year – ha!
04 Jun 2010 11:06 am
Ruth
This is fascinating, particularly given that Chicago is nothing BUT a city of walls, some low some high and some invisible. Thank you for articulating this so beautifully.
04 Jun 2010 11:06 am
KKM
Having recently bridged the Evanston-Chicago divide myself, I really related to this piece. It also speaks to the politics of what defines a "neighborhood" in Chicago. Very insightful.
04 Jun 2010 11:06 am
Rebecca
This is a beautiful piece. Having lived in Evanston for several years, I enjoyed the subtle distinctions you drew between the cities- painful and honest at the same time. Looking forward to the next one!
04 Jun 2010 11:06 am
Sam
We had a wall like the one on Howard in my home town of Shaker Heights, except ours did not come down. It was meant to separate the Shaker from Warrensville, a poorer, predominantly black neighborhood. Interestingly Though it is easy enough to take a little detour or walk around, it continues to mark the deep class and racial divides between the two neighborhoods. I've often wondered what it would take to peel back the layers of dark oak and have an honest conversation about the walls that divide us.
04 Jun 2010 12:06 pm
joy
This is just gorgeous prose. A delight to read. More from this writer please!
04 Jun 2010 03:06 pm
Dan Miller
Another beautiful piece of reporting and insight from Ms. D'amico. Many thanks.
When we had our Chicago brick bungalow tuckpointed and cleaned two years ago, the Polish crew used a mixture of vinegar and water, and scrubbed each brick and mortar line with a brush. For weeks afterward, our bungalow smelled like a pickle.
Regarding Bernie's Wall. I don't believe erection of the wall was racially motivated — that is, to keep the black folk of southern Evanston from mingling with the white folk of northern West Rogers Park. Black alderman in the Chicago City Council voted with Bernie to authorize construction of the wall.
Bernie was more concerned about keeping Chicagoans trapped in Chicago, preventing Chicago consumers from spending money in the stores (Target, Best Buy, Jewel-Osco food-drug store) on the Evanston side of the wall, where the sales tax is noticeably lower than in high-tax Chicago.
That was easier than lowering the cost of government in Chicago, and reducing the Chicago sales tax.
Dan Miller
06 Jun 2010 11:06 am
Dianne
You are such a gifted writer and story teller. Beautiful!
06 Jun 2010 07:06 pm
Becca
Do you think that dumping all the bricks in the lake would raise the water level? Love it that the bricks on this house turn out to be a bright orange, that's a fantastic punchline to this really interesting piece!
07 Jun 2010 12:06 pm
Sue R.
Only a great writer such as yourself could articulate such an interesting, funny (and true!) story about "bricks"!
-From your friend whose wall fell down because she got to the tuckpointing too late.
07 Jun 2010 02:06 pm
Jo from WRBN
Love this from so many angles! Very nice piece of writing.
We looked at nearly every house & 2-flat on the market in Evanston (even beyond our price range) when we were house-hunting way back in 1990, since I had enjoyed my single life in a charming central Evanston (or Heavenston) vintage condo. But prices were dramatically lower in West Rogers Park (even without considering the ridiculously high Evanston property taxes) that we soon moved our search south to WRP. My old Evanston neighborhood has lost much of its charm since then, but we still trek north for restaurants, farmer's market, shopping, & entertainment. We're sad that our neighborhood doesn't have the amenities its residents deserve, but we love our neighbors & many aspects of city life.
Odd how my memory had tricked me into thinking Bernie's wall was built illegally in the middle of the night, a la Daley's bulldozing of the Meigs Field runways. I agree with Dan on the reasons for the stupid wall, it was to keep Chicagoans IN.
Hopping on my bike soon to take a look at your bright orange bricks!
09 Jun 2010 11:06 am
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