Brickcrete Co-Op

Yesterday the University of Michigan announced its digitization of a scarce civil rights-era newsletter, the Selma Inter-Religious Project (1966-1969), now available online through the Hathi Trust Digital Library. Digitization required securing permission from the publisher, the Revered Francis X. Walker, now 81 years old and living in Tennessee. Walker initially developed the newsletter in hopes of drawing support for the civil rights movement, and reported on abuses and developments.

For those interested in the building trades, Walker reported on the establishment of a profit-making cooperative -- called HELP-COA -- outside of Camden (Wilcox County) Alabama:

Brickcrete on slab construction became popular in the early 1950s, and one finds advertisements for such residences in regional newspapers. Brickcrete was also produced in southeastern Louisiana and Mississippi. In New Orleans, the Holloway Construction Company built brickcrete houses under the name "Holloway Homes" and maintained a model home in Estelle Heights, Marrero, Louisiana.

Image above: Francis X. Walker. "To Serve this Development." Selma Inter-Religious Project (13 January 1969): p. 2.

To consult the newsletter online, click here.

Read more about the digitization project here.

Lexicon: Bodine

We encountered a new building term yesterday in a trade catalog titled The Complete House Builder (1890). Bodine was a patented roofing product developed by the Bodine Roofing Company of Mansfield, Ohio in the early 1880s. Comprised of polychromed white poplar and spruce wood pulp, bodine's advantage over slate was its affordability and the ease with which any DIYer could install it. For the "Cheap Cottage Set on Posts" illustrated above, it was one option that the M.A. Donohue & Company considered economical. An added benefit for those with rain barrels and cisterns was its inconspicuous flavor. The Architect, Builder and Woodworker reported that rain water flowing off a bodine roof imparted "no unpleasant taste," unlike that experienced with composition roofs (gravel, pitch, chemical, asbestos or felt).(1)

(1)"The Bodine Patent Roof," The Architect, Builder and Woodworker 19 (October 1883): p. 188.

Image above: "No. 1--Front Elevation," The Complete House Builder with Hints on Building (Chicago: M.A. Donohue & Company, 407-429 Dearborn Street, 9 April 1890), n.p. Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.