Built sometime prior to 1916, this is the second of two smokestacks/chimneys which survive on the site of the now defunct Western Clay Manufacturing Company. In order to differentiate the two we refer to this as Stack #2, as the NRHP Registration Form refers to both simply as
Stack. Unlike Stack #1, which was connected to just one kiln (#6), this stack served two, Kilns #4 and #5. As well, this stack can be differentiated from Stack #1 by the lack of corbeled bricks at this stack's top, a feature which the other stack has retained. Pertinent data on this stack will be found further below.
The Western Clay Manufacturing Company Historic District contains the relatively intact buildings and structures which once comprised the major brick manufacturing facility in Montana, producing brick for many of the most architecturally and historically significant buildings in Montana. As well, the complex manufactured other important clay products such as paving brick and sewer tile. The complex still houses a significant collection of late 19th and early 20th century brick and tile manufacturing machinery and apparatus.
Begun as a brick factory in Butte, MT by C.C. Thurston in the 1870s, the Butte business was moved to the Helena area in 1883, and bought in 1885 by Nicholas Kessler, a native of Luxemburg, who emigrated to the United States in 1854. Kessler had begun producing brick in another Helena brickyard in 1866. Another major Helena brick maker, Jacob Switzer, operated a brick making facility near his clay pits at Blossburg. In 1905 the Switzer and the Kessler works merged, incorporating the
Western Clay Manufacturing Company. By 1915, Western Clay had become Montana's largest clay product manufacturer.
Western Clay Manufacturing produced some of the highest quality brick in Montana. Bricks from this plant were specified by architects for some of the most prominent public buildings around the state and can be seen today in such buildings as Fort Harrison in Helena, the Federal Courthouses at Butte and Helena, the Civic Center and the First National Trust Co. in Helena, the state hospital at Galen, the campuses of state universities at Missoula, Bozeman, Butte, Havre, and Dillon, aw well as other buildings as far away as Kalispel and Billings.
Today the complex is also home to the
Archie Bray Foundation, a ceramics school which grew out of the clay products manufacturing business and which enjoys a national reputation in pottery and the ceramic arts. Though presently closed due to COVID-19, it will soon reopen to students and the public.
Stack #2
This stack is constructed of brick, is ten feet square at its base, is 45 feet tall, and is connected to kilns #4 and 5 by means of an underground flue. Unlike the other kiln stack which survives at the Western Clay Manufacturing Co., this one has no corbelled top courses. Corbelling may have been removed and replaced by the present concrete coping.
The first kilns used for firing brick at the Kessler brickyard were scove kilns, which were relatively inefficient because they either underfired or overfired a high percentage of the brick in each batch. Downdraft kilns, or beehive kilns, were more efficient and relied on a nearby stack to create the draft necessary to draw the hot gasses down through the mass of brick and out through the bottom of the kiln. The first downdraft kilns and stacks were built at the Kessler brickyard in 1896. It is not known whether this stack is that one or one of three others built at the plant by 1916.
This stack is unchanged since its construction, except for the possible removal of corbelling at the top. This stack contributes to the Western Clay Manufacturing Co. district as an important part of the brick and clay products manufacturing process.
From the NRHP Registration Form, Page 47