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Ohio building history, hazards and the rules

What Ohio made for houses: brick, tile, pipe, glass, gypsum and the plants that made them

Ohio made the brick, the paving block, the sewer pipe, the roofing tile, the wall and floor tile, the window glass, the gypsum wallboard, the fiberglass and some of the bathroom fixtures that went into its houses, and the state's own geological survey puts the clay behind the brick and the pipe east and south of Columbus rather than under it. This page walks a house material by material and gives each plant its town, its county and its dates as a state survey, a marker, a nomination or a company's own account states them. Nothing read here follows any of it into one Columbus house.

Last updated September 2026 · Four state geological survey reports and a state forestry history, six Ohio Historical Markers, five federal records, four catalog records and five company documents were read September 2026 · No prices on this page; the Estimate Builder carries those · Part of the knowledge base

What this page is, and what it is not

Nobody made an inventory of what any one Central Ohio house is built of. What exists is a record of the industries that supplied it. Every statement below carries the town and the county its source names, because an Ohio date is not a Columbus date.

Neighboring pages own the overlaps: the Columbus limestone, the Ohio Statehouse quarry and the Lustron steel houses built beside the Columbus airport are on the page on who shaped Central Ohio houses; what each material did in a house is on the page on how those houses were built; the tile and fixtures in a bathroom are on the bathroom page and the floors page; Marble Cliff and its quarries are on the early suburbs page.

MaterialWhere in OhioDates givenWho dates it
Paving block for Columbus streetsLogan, Hocking County1885 to 1893State geological survey
Brick and ceramic tileHaydenville, Hocking CountyCompany incorporated 1882Ohio Historical Marker
Clay sewer pipeLogan, Hocking CountyFounded on its site in 1890The company's own account
Floor and wall tileZanesville, Muskingum County1876 to 1935 or 1939; 1894 to 1967Park Service; Ohio History Connection
Window and sheet glassToledo, Lucas CountyGlass works from 1888Ohio Historical Marker
Glass wool insulationNewark, Licking CountyWorks purchased 1933Ohio History Connection
Gypsum and wallboardGypsum, Ottawa County1821 to August 2001State geological survey

The clay, and where Ohio ranked

The Ohio Division of Geological Survey says the Pennsylvanian-age shales and clays of eastern Ohio are the primary raw material for the state's ceramic industry. That the brick and pipe towns sit east and southeast of Columbus rather than around it is this page's reading of that geography, not the survey's. The same ground, read for what it does under a house, is on the page on what goes wrong in a Central Ohio house.

The survey gives the first reported manufacture in Ohio of each clay product a house uses: roofing tile in 1814, pressed brick in 1829, fire brick in 1841, terra cotta and drain tile in 1859, sewer pipe in 1868, sanitary and decorative encaustic tiling in 1879, and paving brick in 1885. First reported manufacture is not the same fact as a company's founding, which matters below.

Ohio's rank rests on two records measuring different things a century apart. The United States Geological Survey's Mineral Resources of the United States for 1910 says "Ohio has been the leading clay-working State in the Union" since that office began compiling figures, and puts Ohio first that year in vitrified paving brick, first in sewer pipe and first in tile other than drain tile, and fourth in common brick. That last rank is the counterweight: Ohio led the clay industry as a whole while four states made more ordinary house brick. Those 1910 ranks go by the value of products manufactured.

The modern figure counts something else. The state survey says Ohio mined 2.0 million tons of clay and shale in 2003, ranking fifth nationally, and that the record year was 7.1 million tons in 1999, when its report on Ohio mineral industries also ranked the state fifth, out of 44 producing states. Those are different measures, and no arrow is drawn between them. The survey says 52 percent of that 2003 tonnage went to common clay products such as building bricks, and names Licking, Marion, Columbiana and Richland Counties as important brick-producing areas besides Tuscarawas County. Licking is the Central Ohio one.

Paving brick, and the Logan company that paved Columbus streets

The survey says nearly all paving bricks in Ohio were produced east or south of Columbus, because the alluvial drift materials of western Ohio are too fine grained and have too short a firing range to produce a large brick. The first paving bricks manufactured in Ohio were made at Malvern, in Carroll County, in the summer of 1885.

That same summer the Hocking Clay Manufacturing Company of Logan, in Hocking County, supplied enough of its Hayden Block to pave 3,704 square yards of Lexington Avenue in Columbus, and by 1893 it had supplied block for 345,347 square yards on 38 streets in the capital city. Writing in 1999, the survey says those salt-glazed blocks, more than a hundred years old, can still be seen in the streets of German Village. It is the clearest line in this record from an Ohio clay plant to a Columbus street; how that neighborhood got its sewers is on the German Village page.

Athens County made the other famous block. The survey says Nelsonville pavers, made in northwestern Athens County from Lower Kittanning fireclay, are known for their salt-glazed surfaces, and the Columbus Metropolitan Library's Columbus Memory catalog dates the Nelsonville Brick Company: formed in 1877, closed in 1937, which the library attributes to concrete and the Great Depression.

The survey says the paving brick industry flourished in Ohio from the 1880s until the 1930s, and it says how that ended: by the 1930s cement and asphalt were overtaking brick, the demand for paving brick was gone, and most surviving plants turned to other clay working.

Haydenville, a village built out of its own kilns

The Hocking Clay Manufacturing Company later moved to Haydenville, in Hocking County. An Ohio Historical Marker there says the village was founded by and named for the Columbus industrialist Peter Hayden, and that the incorporation of the Haydenville Mining and Manufacturing Company in 1882 began the manufacture of brick and ceramic tile from fire clay. The village was built in phases out of its own clay products, with brick homes on the east side of town dating to the 1870s and most of the tile block homes to the 1880s and 1890s. It stayed company-owned until 1964, and the Haydenville Historic District joined the National Register in 1973. The coal field in Athens, Hocking and Perry Counties is set out on the page on the Hocking Valley coal towns that heated Columbus.

Sewer pipe and roofing tile

An Ohio Historical Marker at Uhrichsville says clay led to more than 30 clay plants in Tuscarawas County making brick, flue liners and sewer pipes, that in the industry's heyday they produced nearly one-fourth of Ohio's clay products, and that the decline of the sewer pipe industry began with the wide use of plastic pipe. The marker puts no year on that share.

The Hocking Valley's own pipe town is Logan, just southeast of Central Ohio. The state survey says ceramic-product plants in the Logan area of Hocking County consumed several hundred tons of Pennsylvanian-age clay a day from the 1880s through the 1950s, making building tile, sewer pipe, drain tile and bricks, and it names ceramic sewer pipe made by the Logan Clay Products Company at Logan among current Ohio clay products. The company's own account says the plant was founded on its current site in 1890. What a clay lateral means for the house above it is on the sewer lateral page.

Roofing tile came from Perry County. Ludowici's own history says the Celadon Company bought the Imperial Clay Company and its factory at New Lexington, Ohio in 1905 and that the two consolidated in 1906. A National Register nomination in Muskingum County shows the product landing on a house: a 1912 house at Roseville of ironspot brick trimmed with smooth concrete and smooth-dressed stone, its hipped roof covered with tile the nomination says was "probably produced by the Ludowici Co., in nearby New Lexington." The hedge is the nomination's. A tile roof and an ironspot wall are tells a field guide reads; those are on the page on telling a house's era and style.

Wall and floor tile: the Zanesville companies

The National Park Service says that in the last quarter of the nineteenth century the town of Zanesville, Ohio was "the largest center for pottery and tile-making in the world," and names the Ohio Encaustic Tile Company, the Mosaic Tile Company and the J.B. Owens Pottery among its factories. The superlative is the Park Service's own wording.

Two of those companies can now be dated. The American Encaustic Tiling Company was established at Zanesville in 1876, on both the Park Service's record and the Ohio History Connection's. When it closed is where the two part: the Park Service says about 1935, as a result of the Depression, and an Ohio History Connection record published through Ohio Memory says it made tile until the Second World War and closed in 1939. Neither shows its working, so both print. An Ohio History Connection record published through Ohio Memory says the Mosaic Tile Company was founded at Zanesville in 1894, made plain and ornamental tiles and other ceramic goods, and closed in 1967; that record names two founders, and because the spelling of one could not be settled against a second source, neither name prints.

Then the sentence the record leaves: nothing read ties any Zanesville tile to any Columbus bathroom. The companies were in Muskingum County, east of Columbus, making tile in the decades when older Columbus neighborhoods got their first tiled bathrooms. That is a coincidence of dates, not a documented supply line. What was in those bathrooms is on the bathroom page.

Glass, and which Ohio town made the kind that goes in a window

Three Ohio glass towns turn up here and only one supports the sentence a reader expects. An Ohio Historical Marker in Toledo says Edward Drummond Libbey relocated his glass operation from Massachusetts to Toledo in 1888, that Edward Ford established his plate glass factory upriver in 1899, and that locally developed innovations there include glass tubing, sheet window glass and fiber glass.

The two Central Ohio glass towns made something else. An Ohio Historical Marker in Newark says the A.H. Heisey and Company produced hand-wrought glass in Newark, Ohio beginning in 1896 and that the plant closed in 1957; that was tableware. Anchor Hocking's own account says that in 1905 it fired up the first glass plant in Lancaster, Ohio, and that production continues at that original location; Lancaster, in Fairfield County, made and makes glassware and bakeware. Sheet window glass, on the record read here, is a Lucas County story.

What went into the wall: gypsum board, then fiberglass

Ohio wallboard once came out of Ohio ground, and the state survey dates the sequence in Ottawa County. Gypsum was first recognized in Ohio in 1821 by two boatmen on Sandusky Bay; a quarry and a combination mill and dock were established by early 1822; and the town of Gypsum took its name from the quarries. Marsh and Company opened the first of several underground gypsum mines in 1901 in Portage Township, and in 1902 it and the Granite Wall Plaster Company were sold to the United States Gypsum Company. Production reached an all-time peak of 562,928 tons in 1928. In modern times, the survey says, all of it went into wallboard. The mine and the wallboard plant at Gypsum were shut down in August 2001, "thus ending 180 years of gypsum mining in Ohio," in the survey's words.

So the plain point: an Ohio house finished through most of the twentieth century could have Ohio gypsum in its walls, and one being reworked today does not, because the mine and the plant are closed.

The survey explains why gypsum board behaves as it does in a fire: the water that is part of gypsum's chemical composition is released as the board's surface reaches the boiling point of water and dissipates the heat, and after about fifteen minutes of exposure to a fire the bound water is released to a depth of a quarter inch. The rules Ohio wrote after its own fires and floods are on the page on the incidents behind the rules.

Fiberglass: Newark, Toledo and Granville

An Ohio Guide record kept by the Ohio History Connection says the Owens-Corning Fiberglas Company plant at 400 Case Avenue in Newark occupies the former Owens-Illinois works, purchased in 1933 to provide spun-glass and glass fiber research facilities, and that during the 1930s and 1940s the company manufactured glass wool insulation for battleships, refrigerators and houses. The federal Toxics Release Inventory still lists an open Owens Corning insulating systems facility at that address in Licking County. What that plant makes today, no source read here states.

The company's own filing adds a second Licking County address. Owens Corning tells the Securities and Exchange Commission that its research and development is primarily conducted at a Science and Technology Center on about 500 acres the company owns outside Granville, Ohio. That filing does not use the word Newark anywhere.

Fixtures, stone, lime, cement and lumber

Mansfield Plumbing's own timeline says Mansfield Sanitary Pottery, Inc., of Fredericksburg, Ohio was incorporated on January 24, 1929, and that it bought the Perrysville, Ohio pottery plant in 1933 and consolidated operations there. The company's own present-tense description of itself says its sanitaryware is made now "at facilities in Mexico and Colombia operated by" its parent company, and its acrylic bathware at a facility in Henderson, Texas, with its corporate office and distribution center in Ashland, Ohio.

An Ohio Historical Marker at Berea, in Cuyahoga County, says sandstone quarries developed there in the 1840s and eventually covered nearly 250 acres, and that decreasing demand and the Great Depression closed the last of them in the mid-1930s.

The state survey's 1999 report says lime from Ohio limestone and dolomite came from six operations in Ottawa, Sandusky, Seneca and Wyandot Counties, and that Ohio ranked fourth nationally in lime production out of 34 producing states. An Ohio Historical Marker at Woodville, in Sandusky County, says Ohio has ranked "as high as first nationally in the production of lime"; the marker gives no year and says only that it happened in recent years, so it prints in its own words beside the survey's dated rank rather than instead of it. The United States Geological Survey counted five Portland cement plants in Ohio in 1910, none in Central Ohio.

The lumber came from a state that had cut itself over first. The Ohio Division of Forestry's history describes a wilderness landscape nearly 95 percent forested. It says clearing ran, reportedly, from 38 percent of the land in 1870 to 20 percent in 1881, which led the Ohio General Assembly to establish a State Forestry Bureau in 1885, and it puts the low point at 3,707,958 acres of forest on 14 percent of the state's land area in 1942. Those are figures for forest cover, not for anybody's framing lumber.

The short version. The clay lies east and south of Columbus and so did the plants: paving block from Logan, clay sewer pipe still made there, roof tile from New Lexington, tile from Zanesville. Window glass is a Toledo product; the Newark and Lancaster glass is tableware. Ohio wallboard came from the town of Gypsum until August 2001. Nothing read here follows any of it into one Columbus house.

Sources

Every figure, date and quotation on this page comes from one of these documents, read on the date given. Where two of them disagree, the page says so.

Common questions

Did Ohio lead the country in brick and clay products?

In 1910 it did, on the federal record, and the same record shows where it did not. The United States Geological Survey's Mineral Resources of the United States for 1910 says "Ohio has been the leading clay-working State in the Union" since that office began compiling figures, and puts Ohio first that year in vitrified paving brick, first in sewer pipe and first in tile other than drain tile, third in drain tile, and fourth in common brick. Those ranks go by the value of the products made. The Ohio Division of Geological Survey's modern figure counts tonnage mined instead, and puts Ohio fifth nationally in 1999 and fifth again in 2003.

Were the brick streets in German Village made nearby?

The block in some Columbus streets is documented Ohio clay from Hocking County. The Ohio Division of Geological Survey says the Hocking Clay Manufacturing Company of Logan supplied enough of its Hayden Block in 1885 to pave 3,704 square yards of Lexington Avenue in Columbus, and that by 1893 it had supplied block for 345,347 square yards of pavement on 38 streets in the capital city. Writing in 1999, the survey says those salt-glazed blocks, more than a hundred years old, can still be seen in the streets of German Village. It does not say which street carries which company's block.

What did the Zanesville tile companies make, and when did they close?

The National Park Service says Zanesville, Ohio was "the largest center for pottery and tile-making in the world" in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and names several factories there. The American Encaustic Tiling Company was established at Zanesville in 1876, on both the Park Service's record and the Ohio History Connection's. The two disagree about the ending: the Park Service says the company closed about 1935 as a result of the Depression, and an Ohio History Connection record says 1939. The Ohio History Connection also says the Mosaic Tile Company was founded there in 1894, made plain and ornamental tiles and other ceramic goods, and closed in 1967.

Where did the gypsum in Ohio wallboard come from?

From Ottawa County, and from a town that took its name from the quarries. The Ohio Division of Geological Survey says gypsum was first recognized in Ohio in 1821 by two boatmen on Sandusky Bay, that a quarry and a combination mill and dock were established by early 1822, and that the town of Gypsum was named for them. Marsh and Company opened the first underground mine there in 1901, and in 1902 it and the Granite Wall Plaster Company were sold to the United States Gypsum Company. Production peaked at 562,928 tons in 1928, and in modern times all of it went into wallboard. The mine and plant shut down in August 2001.

Was fiberglass insulation made in Newark, Ohio?

It was, on two records. An Ohio Guide record kept by the Ohio History Connection says the Owens-Corning Fiberglas Company plant at 400 Case Avenue in Newark occupies the former Owens-Illinois works, purchased in 1933 to provide spun-glass and glass fiber research facilities, and that during the 1930s and 1940s the company manufactured glass wool insulation for battleships, refrigerators and houses. The federal Toxics Release Inventory still lists an open Owens Corning insulating systems facility at that address in Licking County. What the plant makes today is not stated by any source read for this page, and nothing traces the insulation in any one attic back to it.

Where did the window glass in an old Ohio house come from?

Toledo is the Ohio town the record supports for window glass. An Ohio Historical Marker there says Edward Drummond Libbey relocated his glass operation from Massachusetts to Toledo in 1888, that Edward Ford established his plate glass factory upriver in 1899, and that locally developed innovations include glass tubing, sheet window glass and fiber glass. The other two glass towns in this record made something else. An Ohio Historical Marker says the A.H. Heisey and Company produced hand-wrought glass at Newark from 1896 until the plant closed in 1957, and Anchor Hocking's own account says that in 1905 it fired up the first glass plant in Lancaster, Ohio, which makes glassware and bakeware.

Is vitrified clay sewer pipe still made in Ohio?

Yes, at Logan in Hocking County. The Ohio Division of Geological Survey names ceramic sewer pipe made by the Logan Clay Products Company at Logan among current Ohio clay products, and the company's own account says the plant was founded on its current site in 1890. The survey also says ceramic-product plants in the Logan area consumed several hundred tons of Pennsylvanian-age clay a day from the 1880s through the 1950s, making building tile, sewer pipe, drain tile, paving bricks and salt-glazed bricks. An Ohio Historical Marker at Uhrichsville says the decline of the sewer pipe industry began with the wide use of plastic pipe.

Which Ohio clay towns were closest to Columbus?

The Hocking Valley towns, southeast of the city. The Ohio Division of Geological Survey says nearly all paving bricks in Ohio were produced east or south of Columbus, because the alluvial drift materials of western Ohio are too fine grained and have too short a firing range to produce a large brick. Logan, in Hocking County, supplied paving block for Columbus streets in the 1880s and 1890s and still makes clay sewer pipe. Haydenville, in the same county, was built in phases out of its own brick and tile. Of the counties the survey names as important brick-producing areas, Licking is the Central Ohio one.

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