Noticed an old brick arch in Knoxville that stopped me in my tracks

I was down in Knoxville last month visiting my sister, and we took a walk through the old part of town near the river. There's this old warehouse, probably from the 1920s, and someone had built this jack arch over a loading door, all these narrow red bricks set on edge with a slight curve. I stopped and just looked at it for a good five minutes, because you don't see that kind of work anymore, everyone just throws in a steel lintel and calls it a day. The mortar was still solid, no cracks running through the joints, and the bricks were so uniform you could tell they were cut by hand on site. It made me think about how my grandpa used to talk about laying arches like that back in Ohio, working with a wooden form and waiting a full week before striking it. I asked around and a local guy said that warehouse is from 1927 and nobody's touched the brickwork since. Has anyone else run into old arches like that on a remodel or teardown, and did you try to save them or just document them before the wrecking ball came?

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emmam8926d ago

I read somewhere that those old jack arches were basically load-bearing art, the bricks lock together tighter the more weight you put on them. My cousin does historic restoration in Cincinnati and he says they still use the same wooden form technique for repair jobs, it's a dying skill for sure. Good on you for stopping to appreciate it, most folks walk right past that stuff without a second glance.

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