Historic paving bricks stolen from Missoula

MISSOULA – About 1,300 bricks, made in Seattle in 1910 and gathered for a historic restoration project here, have been stolen from outside the old city shops.

The bricks, made by the Seattle Brick Co., were originally used to pave streets here, but were eventually dug up and used for other projects or taken to the dump.

When the city decided to return Railroad Street to its original, paved-brick form, the city asked people to return any of the bricks they might have. Bricks were also salvaged from retaining walls.

Community-service workers cleaned and scraped each brick and stacked them on pallets.

“We were going to transfer them to Railroad Street this spring,” said Philip Maechling, Missoula’s historic preservation officer. “They’d been there all winter and nobody messed with them.

“I went over there last Thursday and they were gone,” he said.

He suspects the bricks, weighing more than 9,000 pounds, were stolen during the last two weeks of March.

“I’ve scoured the country, and I have all the (old Missoula) bricks I could find,” Maechling said. “I can’t replace them.