This Old Brick

Purmal Brick Company pressed brick retrieved from the McKenzie Sharland Grocery

Here is a brick from the former chimney of the McKenzie Sharland Grocery. The chimney did not survive the move from the old foundation to the new foundation. But many of the bricks were saved and will be re-used in the house.

So what does PB Co mean? This is a "brickmark" and located in the "frog" of the brick. In this case, it stands for "Purmal Brick Company" that was operating at that time (early 1900s) on the site of the Medicine Hat Brick and Tile.

It is a pressed brick, a very common form of brick manufacturing a century ago. By 1912, when this brick was made, pressed brick were available from two plants in Redcliff and the nearby Alberta Clay Products in addition to Purmal Brick Company. Lots of local choices! I-XL brick was not on the market until 1913.

The Purmal brothers were immigrant Latvian stonemasons who built their early stone farmhouse south-east of Medicine Hat. The family took over the site of the Medicine Hat Brick Company (Corbin homestead) about 1893 and began making softmud brick, firing their kiln with coal from upriver.

In 1901, they successfully drilled for natural gas on their manufacturing site. They also installed a new press and an extruder to make pressed brick and wire cut brick, in time to build St. John's Presbyterian Church as both supplier and contractor in 1902.

The Purmals merged their pressing operations with Texan Llewellyn Pruitt several years later. He had built a plant on the other side of the tracks, on the flat below East Glen. His pressed brick bore the "LP" brickmark.

That's a lot of detail for one little old pressed brick!