Hollow Brick Discovery

During my recent vacation trip to San Francisco I took a walk around the neighborhood near our motel. At the northeast corner of Vicente Street and the Great Highway in San Francisco's Outer Sunset neighborhood I discovered this beauty:Built in 1927, it has a fascinating history which I will leave to the reader to discover at this link. What caught my eye was the large brickwork. I've always thought the brick used in AHM's structures was oversized. It is, for standard brick, but not for "hollow brick" or "hollow tile", a material that came into use in America in the 1920s but has long since fallen out of favor. I've mentioned this material in a previous blog post on the meat market mock-up. This building stood out in a sea of structures known for their sameness. Most of its neighbors are wood and stucco, all on narrow lots, shoulder to shoulder*. But the big draw for me was the brick itself. I had never seen it first hand and it wasn't until reviewing my photos from the trip that I…