Photo by NCinDC.

You’ve probably seen these on your drive in and out of the city a thousand times: the mysterious brick buildings seen on the National Arboretum site from New York Avenue. I honestly never really gave two thoughts about them until some research illuminated what they are: the remains of the United Brick Corporation’s brickyards.

The beehive-shaped brick kilns are the only remaining brickyards of at least a hundred that existed in Washington in the early 20th century. The brickyards, operated by a number of companies, including the Hudson Brick and Supply Company, have been at that location for at least a hundred years, since 1909. In 1927, operations at the site were expanded, and the United Brick Corporation took over the site in 1930.

As Washington changed in the 1930s, many of the brickyards closed or moved out of the city because of either exhausted clay deposits or real estate development. However, the brickyards at New York Avenue did not close, but in fact grew in the following years. After Word War II, construction boomed in the city and the United Brick Corporation supplied many of the construction materials.

The United Brick Corporation Complex closed in 1972, and in 1976 the complex was transferred to the United States Department of Agriculture. Soon after it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is now a part of the National Arboretum site, though the brickyard has not changed much in the following years, neither to make it a more integrated part of the arboretum or to use the buildings for a more practical purpose, such as research.