In the wake of Chicago’s city-wide fire in 1871, many parts of the city were declared to be within “fire limits,” namely zones where new construction could only be with the use of brick or stone. Further use of wood construction, it was felt, would leave the city vulnerable to another massive conflagration reminiscent of 1871. In fact, Chicago did indeed experience a second major fire in 1874. An insatiable demand for brick arose.
The situation caught the attention of William Greggs, a Philadelphia brickmaker, who promptly relocated to the Chicago area to take advantage of the huge business opportunity. Gregg identified clay deposits along the CB&Q at Bushville, twenty miles west of Chicago, west of Clarendon Hills and east of Downers Grove, and acquired a tract of land for quarrying, brick manufacture, and worker housing. CB&Q had established a milk stop at Bushville at the time of the line’s opening in 1864, where dairy farmers brought cans of raw milk to the railroad platform in the morning, and retrieved the empty milk cans in the afternoon.
By the spring of 1872, Gregg began manufacturing bricks under the name of the Excelsior Pressed Brick Manufacturing Company. Gregg reportedly employed 120 people, mostly immigrants, who were housed on the property in the newly established community of Gregg’s. Gregg boasted that the new kilns had the capacity to produce 70,000 bricks per day, using a triple pressure brick machine of Gregg’s own invention. Using this new method of extrusion Gregg claimed his bricks could withstand 100,000 pounds of pressure without cracking.
An often-retold legend is that Gregg chose the location because the site was the highest point on the CB&Q railroad between Chicago and the Mississippi River (which is true) and that shipping cost would be lower because the carloads of bricks would be pulled downhill to Chicago. It is a fun story, but lacking any relationship to transportation economics, then or now. The simple fact was that the land was available and was underlaid with the grade of clay suitable for brickmaking. The clay quality was sufficiently satisfactory for other brick makers to also locate in the vicinity.
Greggs sponsored a CB&Q excursion train in October, 1872, a year after the great fire, to show off his brickmaking operation. The excursion passenger list read like a who’s who of industry, Chicago and the western suburbs. Brick people from Philadelphia, Ecuador and Chile were in attendance, along with Thomas Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Thomas Biddle, a prominent Philadelphia financier, Chicago businessman and socialite David Gage (much more about Gage in future posts), William Robbins, the founder of Hinsdale, architects, members of the Chicago Board of Trade, and many other persons prominent in the business community. Gregg spoke glowingly of his expected production increase to 140,000 bricks per day, and his newly patented triple-pressure brick machine.
Despite William Gregg’s optimism and high-profile promotion, the business experienced difficulties. Production likely never reached the levels described to the 1872 visitors. Gregg sought external financing from Philadelphia investors, and executed a mortgage on the property in December, 1873. Just two years later, in 1875, Excelsior defaulted on its loan and Gregg’s Philadelphia financiers initiated foreclosure proceedings. By the end of 1875, Excelsior had ceased operation. Gregg himself left Chicago and died in 1888. Other companies reportedly continued brick manufacture in the area until 1900.
In 1872, Gregg built a brick house on the property, ostensibly for himself, as a practical demonstration of the quality of Excelsior bricks. It would appear that Gregg never actually lived in the house, preferring the comfort of the newly reconstructed (after the 1871 fire) Palmer House Hotel in downtown Chicago.
Following the demise of Excelsior Brick, the house went on to have a varied and sometimes less than savory history. It hosted a residence, a mattress factory, a speakeasy, a gambling venue, a funeral parlor, a recreation center, a home for priests and nuns of nearby Holy Trinity Catholic Church, and a church community center. During its nefarious days as speakeasy and gambling parlor, it is said that Al Capone and baseball players spent leisurely evenings there in the 1920s, with gambling stakes as high as $10,000 (upwards to $200,000 in current day value). Since 1981 it has been preserved as the Westmont Historical Society Museum.
With the end of brick manufacturing at the turn of the twentieth century, the quarry and kiln workers drifted away and the vicinity became an unincorporated quasi-frontier settlement. Residences were described as “bungalows or shacks.” The community had no paved streets, electricity, gas, telephones, piped water or sewers. Though some households had private wells, the public water supply largely consisted of a single public pump. For nearly two decades, the little community of Gregg’s had a vague and bleak future. All that changed, however, when the A.T. MacIntosh Company, a prominent real estate developer, bought up the Gregg’s property and transformed it into Westmont, the vibrant town along the Q that we recognize today.