Cream Brick Cottages / Cream Brick
Cream Brick Cottages
Racine’s rapid and diversified industrial growth after the Civil War attracted a large working population to the city. Desiring their own homes, many workers built modest cottages of similar design in wood or brick. A high concentration of the brick cottages can be found in the Northside Historic District of Cream Brick Workers’ Cottages. Bounded by Goold, English, Chatham and Erie streets, these cottages, built between 1881 and 1913, often exhibit Italianate, Queen Anne or Colonial Revival stylistic embellishments.
Cream Brick
Many of Racine’s historic brick buildings were made of cream brick, a local building material manufactured in the city’s brickyards from 1836 to 1914. Recognized by its pale yellow color, the city’s cream brick was molded from calcium and magnesium-rich clay deposits found along Lake Michigan’s shore. Proving to be a durable masonry product, the local brick was used in the construction of several hundred workers’ cottages.
Marker is at the intersection of N. Main Street and Goold Street, on the right when traveling north on N. Main Street.
Courtesy hmdb.org
