Brickyard Pond

Brickyard Pond. A Flooded Clay Pit. , In 1847, Nathaniel Potter of Providence founded the Nayett Brick Company along the nearby banks of Mouscochuck Creek and what was then a large swamp. Making bricks involved digging clay by hand with picks and shovels from holes 12 to 14 feet in diameter. Usually, about two feet below the surface, clay was struck. The clay was then carried by oxcart and later by a miniature locomotive to the sizing machine, which formed the bricks, and then to the kilns, or brick ovens. It took two weeks to fill the huge kilns and three days of constant fires to cure the bricks., The company reorganized as the Narragansett Brick Company in 1864. In 1893, it was acquired by the New England Steam Brick Company. This combined company controlled the claypits and creek from West Street, where the Bayside YMCA currently stands, to the Providence River. The brickworks employed 200 laborers, about half of whom were immigrants from southern Italy. The back-breaking labor paid $1 to $1.25 per day. Men came home plastered with clay and it took women hours of scrubbing over washboard to clean their clothes., The company produced 67 million bricks in 1897, three times more than any operation of its type in New England. Nearly 100 buildings on the East Side and in downtown Providence were made with Barrington bricks. By the 1920s, the clay beds were 15 feet below sea level, forcing workers to constantly pump water out of the pits. Eventually, "the clay just plain run out" (Anderson et al, Barrington Two Hundredth Anniversary, 1970). In the 1940s, the pumps were stopped, the clay pits flooded with water, and the Town acquired the property which included Brickyard Pond, creating a park for future generations., [Captions:] , New England Steam Brick Company drying shads and giant kilns lined the railroad tracks near Brickyard Pond. Bricks were transported by train as well as by boat.,

, Mary Suriani recalls that brick workers like her father, Guiseppe DeAngelis, were allowed little rest during the grueling ten-hour workday. When they became tired, they were told, , "Put down the pick… and pick up a shovel!"

, Brick makers pose at the entrance to a kiln circa 1925. Giuseppe DeAngelis (mentioned above), third from left, immigrated to Barrington at age 15 to work in the brickyard., New England Steam Brick Company kilns and other buildings stood just west of the Bayside YMCA. 1938 photo., Mouscochuck Creek was performed into a mile-long canal for transporting bricks to the Providence River. On towpaths, oxen pulled barges full of bricks to the mouth of the canal. Once at the river, large, flat-bottomed boats called scows delivered the bricks to Providence, Warren, Bristol, and Newport.