Originally published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 7, 1980
By James Warren
At one time, King County was the world’s largest producer of paving brick. In fact, clay products from King County have long been world-famous.
It all began in 1889 when Arthur Denny, one of Seattle’s founders, incorporated the Denny Clay Company and began using shale clay from the banks of the Duwamish River. His timing was fortuitous for that was the year Seattle’s business district burned to the ground. The city fathers promptly decreed that henceforth all downtown buildings must be built of non-combustible materials.
Denny’s factory was located at Van Asselt, then a southern suburb named for Henry Van Asselt, another famous Seattle pioneer. Business boomed and in 1893 the Denny Company expanded by absorbing the Puget Sound Fire Clay Company and building a new plant in the town of Taylor about 10 miles east of Maple Valley.
In 1901, James Doyle and J.R. Miller came north from California seeking business opportunities. On the river banks south of Lake Washington they discovered high-quality shale. They invited E.J. Matthews of Seattle to join them in forming the Renton Clay Company and a year later were producing 25,000 bricks each ten-hour day.
Business was brisk. Brick paving was considered the ultimate road surfacing, especially Renton brick which was not only durable but was also beveled at the edges. The grooves between the laid bricks provided traction for horses’ hooves.
With prospects for business increasing, Renton Clay bought out the Denny Clay Company, rebuilt the Renton plant and initiated a new name: Denny-Renton Clay and Coal Company.
Production escalated to 75,000 bricks per day in a plant that covered 40 acres of river front property. Employment soared to 500. The product line was diversified to include sewer tile, acid blocks to line tanks, chimney flue lining, conduits, roof tile, drain tile, and fancy face brick as well as paving brick.
The products were shipped around the globe—to South Africa, Chile, Argentina. Streets were paved with Renton brick in San Francisco, Tokyo, and in cities of India, as well as in Seattle and King County.
By 1917, the Denny-Renton corporation was manufacturing 58 million paving bricks a year, more than any company on earth. But as automobile traffic increased, the boom subsided. Concrete and asphalt began to compete.
In 1927, Gladding-McBean purchased the Denny-Renton properties and modernized. Fire brick became a leading product. New types of building brick and roof tiles were developed. The flat oval roof tile used on many Ft. Lewis buildings are of Renton shale.
The city of Seattle, in 1931 took over the factory site of the Van Asselt plant, incorporating it as part of the municipal airport (now Boeing Field). In 1946, the city condemned and appropriated the lands at Taylor as part of the Seattle watershed, causing the factory there to be demolished and the equipment moved to the Renton plant.
In 1962, Gladding-McBean merged with Lockjoint Pipe Company, an East Coast firm, to become Interpace. New product demands made the shale pit at Renton obsolete.
Today [1980], Interpace secures its raw materials from pits near Issaquah, Enumclaw and Spokane and from California. Its Renton plant manufactures fire brick for aluminum factories and other industries as well as products such as building brick. More than 200 persons are employed in what is largely an automated process.
[…] the Interurban often carried bricks from the Denny-Renton Clay Company that were used to improve the Valley road system that took its customers. The last electric train […]
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