20's brick buildings

[Russ Bellinis]

I need to clarify my point about early western towns not being overly fancy in their construction. I was responding to an earlier post that mentioned fancy fronts using marble or other polished stone to decorate the front of a building while using the brick for the sides and back of the building. That may have been common in the East and in big cities on the West Coast. Probably not common in most of the western towns and cities unless they had a marble quarry nearby. Most western commercial buildings had false fronts whether constructed of wood or brick. General statements are also subject to exceptions. I have not traveled in Colorado except to pass through on the interstate. It is a state I would like to explore someday. I have traveled extensively through California, Arizona, and Nevada. Virtually all of the towns that lasted more than a few years in those three states had been burned at least once and had wood buildings replaced with brick, but other than false fronts, most construction was a lot less pretentious than the picture Mountain Man showed of Cripple Creek. I think part of what you would see depends on where people lived. The wealthy mine owners wanted to show off their wealth where they lived. If you go to Virginia City, Nevada and want to see the homes of the mine owners, you won't find them. They were in San Francisco, and were destroyed in the 1912 earthquake. The point I was trying to make is that when you build a brick building, what sort of face you put on it will depend on a number of factors and you can't just put a brick building in any town and automatically face it with polished marble or granite. I'm also not sure when people started painting brick. I believe the question that started this thread had to do with the color of brick in the 1920's. Would brick have been painted in the '20's or not? Would it have been painted everywhere, or only in cities where their was a paint manufacturer nearby? Also a brick commercial building or home might be painted. A brick industrial building would probably not have been painted. If you are modeling something that would have been painted in the 1920's, your brick could be just about whatever color you fancy unless you are trying to model a specific prototype, in which case you might want to find the correct original color. If you are modeling something that would have been left in the natural brick color, then the color would depend on what was available locally.