Abilene brick collector's stash offers peek into history

Photo by Joy Lewis

Doris Kinney holds the last brick made by her father, William "Edgar" Williams, at the Abilene Brick Co. The plant closed in 1980.

Photo by Joy Lewis

photos by Joy Lewis/Reporter-News Paul Smith has spent the past eight years collecting and researching bricks made in West Texas. He keeps his treasure trove of bricks, more than 400, in his garage.

It was one of Abilene's earliest businesses and churned out the bricks that built many of the local structures still standing today. However, traveling to the site of the former Abilene Brick Co., it might be difficult to recognize it as a piece of Abilene history.

North of town, the enormous clay mines are filled with trash now the site of landfills. One original office structure stands but is now a topless bar called the Chitchat Club. Another brickmaking structure also stands but now serves as a ballroom for dance lessons and events.

However, looking at an aerial map of the site, Abilene residents Doris Kinney and Paul A. Smith can point out enough remnants of history to put together a picture of what the brick plant looked like in its prime.

Kinney and Smith are quite possibly the foremost experts on the Abilene Brick Co. their joint effort on digging up brick history has resulted in a brick collection and plans to write a book about the historic company.

Smith said his love of bricks started about eight years ago when he moved from the Chicago area to Abilene to accept a position at McMurry University as a professor of kinesiology and exercise science. Upon walking into his new home, he found three bricks sitting in the garage, the word "Abilene" pressed into the clay on each one.

"Being a transplant and proud of being a new Abilenian," he said, "I wanted to use them to decorate the sunroom, kind of bring some Western culture in there."

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Abilene brick collector's stash offers peek into history