The Three Brickyards of East Olean
For close to half a century Olean would be home to at least one brick manufacturer and at one time there were three brickyards in operation–All located in East Olean.
One may question how East Olean ended up with three brickyards?
Unlike many other industries brickyards were usually built near their supply of raw materials– In this case clay containing shale. And East Olean had several readily accessible (with a little digging) sources of this raw material.
The first brickyard I’ll discuss is also the one that is least known and it was “Allegany Valley Block” (I’ve also seen the name as Allegany Valley Brick– but bricks made by this concern carried the name Allegany Valley Block).
Allegany Valley Block was located along Cherry St (many incorrectly assume this company was located in Allegany due to the name, but this was not the case). For this company, the shale was sourced from the east side of Cherry Hill.
From the records available it seems this business did not last long–Closing after being in business less than 20 years.
Interestingly the part of Cherry Hill where shale was excavated for Allegany Valley Block would later become the Olean City Dump in the late 40’s to the early 50’s.
In addition Allegany Valley Block was owned by the same concern that owned Olean Pressed Brick, which was located at the end of Hoop St. Eventually both companies would come under the control of William Hanley of Hanley Brick fame.
Olean Pressed Brick’s claim to local fame is that present day Forness Pond was created by the excavation of raw materials for Olean Pressed Brick. Prior to being called Forness Pond, it was referred to as the Brickyard Pond.
Perhaps the best known of the Olean brickyards was Sterling Brick which had it start prior to 1900 and stayed in business until the early 40’s.
Sterling supplied many of the bricks found in and under many Olean streets.
One of Olean’s interesting points was created by Sterling Brick and that would be the present day shale pit on the west side of Cherry Hill.
With the expanding use of asphalt as a road building material, paving brick manufactures like Sterling fell by the wayside and with that Olean’s history of brick making was over with.
