Mackey Brick and Tile Manufacturing Company
Floresville, Wilson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Nelson Mackey (1825-1898), founder of Texas-based Mackey Brick Company, was born Nelson Mackey Laraway in Catskill, New York. He grew up in the Hudson Valley where the name Mackey was synonymous with brick manufacturing. After business ventures in Iowa and Illinois, Mackey came to the San Antonio area in the late 1870s. By the 1880s, he began to invest in a brick manufacturing company that would eventually become one of the most successful in the state. In 1887, he and several partners acquired land around Calaveras. Of this tract, 150 acres were set aside for the mining of clay for brick making, and the remaining acreage supplied the necessary 30,000 cords of wood needed to fire kilns. Mackey’s employees had the choice to live on-site in company housing. Workers were paid in tokens that were redeemable at the company store. The San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad created a spur named the Mackey spur to pick up bricks on-site. With transportation readily available, Mackey bricks were soon shipped across southern Texas. The buff-colored bricks were used to build various downtown San Antonio businesses, as well as landmarks such as the foundation of the Federal Building, an addition to the Menger Hotel and the Vance Building. Bricks were also used in construction outside of San Antonio. In 1891, the Southwest Texas State Lunatic Asylum was constructed using seven million Mackey bricks. Mackey often pointed out that if lined end-to-end, they would have reached from San Antonio to Chicago. In 1889, the company added “tile” to their name and produced red clay pipe from a quarry south of San Antonio. Unfortunately, because of fierce competition with south Texas and Mexican brick companies, the business declined by the late 1890s. Mackey passed away in 1898 and is buried in Perry, Iowa.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Nelson Mackey was born into a Hudson Valley family where the name was practically a byword for brickmaking, and after ventures in Iowa and Illinois he brought that trade to the San Antonio area in the late 1870s. By 1887 he and partners held land near Calaveras with clay pits and vast woodlots to fire the kilns, a company town with worker housing, tokens, and a store, and a rail spur to carry the buff-colored bricks across south Texas. Mackey bricks built downtown San Antonio landmarks and, in 1891, the state lunatic asylum with seven million of them, before fierce competition sent the business into decline by the time of his death in 1898.
Why it matters
The Mackey works illustrate the industrial brickmaking that literally built the cities of Gilded Age Texas, complete with the company-town economy typical of the era's heavy industry.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The decades after the Civil War were an age of building in America — of railroads pushing into new country, of cities rising fast, and of the heavy industries that supplied the brick, iron, and lumber to raise them. This was the Gilded Age, when fortunes were made in manufacturing and when a growing city like San Antonio needed vast quantities of building material to become the place it aspired to be.
Brickmaking was one of those foundational industries, and it depended on a specific combination of resources: good clay to shape, abundant wood to fire the kilns, and, above all, a way to move a heavy, bulky product to market. Where those three came together, a brickworks could flourish and ship its wares across a whole region.
This was also the era of the company town, when large industrial operations often housed their own workers, paid them in tokens or scrip redeemable at the company store, and built their world around the plant. It was an economic arrangement typical of heavy industry in the late nineteenth century, one that bound a worker's wages, home, and daily purchases all to a single employer.
People & events
Nelson Mackey, born Nelson Mackey Laraway in Catskill, New York, in 1825, came from the Hudson Valley, where the Mackey name was practically synonymous with brick. He carried that inherited trade west, through business ventures in Iowa and Illinois, and arrived in the San Antonio area in the late 1870s. By the 1880s he was investing in the brick company that would grow into one of the most successful in Texas.
In 1887 he and several partners acquired land around Calaveras, and the scale of the operation was striking: 150 acres set aside for mining clay, and the rest of the tract devoted to supplying the roughly 30,000 cords of wood needed to fire the kilns. Workers could live on-site in company housing and were paid in tokens redeemable at the company store — a self-contained industrial world. Crucially, the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad ran a spur, the "Mackey spur," right to the site to carry the bricks away.
With that rail link, Mackey's buff-colored bricks traveled across southern Texas. They went into downtown San Antonio businesses and into landmarks — the foundation of the Federal Building, an addition to the famous Menger Hotel, the Vance Building. In 1891, seven million Mackey bricks built the Southwest Texas State Lunatic Asylum, and Mackey liked to boast that laid end to end they would stretch from San Antonio to Chicago. In 1889 the firm added "tile" to its name and began producing red clay pipe. But fierce competition from other south Texas and Mexican brickmakers wore the business down; it declined by the late 1890s, and Mackey died in 1898.
Its place in the American story
Every Gilded Age city was, quite literally, built brick by brick, and the story of Nelson Mackey is the story of the men and enterprises that supplied that raw material. When you look at the surviving masonry landmarks of a city like San Antonio, you are looking at the physical output of operations like his. This is industrial history you can still touch.
The Mackey works also capture the full anatomy of Gilded Age heavy industry: the marriage of natural resources and railroads, the company town with its housing and token wages and company store, and the vulnerability of even a dominant firm to competition. That the business rose to prominence and then declined within a couple of decades is itself a characteristic American industrial arc.
And Mackey's own path — a family trade carried from the brickyards of the Hudson Valley across the country to Texas — reflects the westward movement of skills and capital that built the American economy. Knowledge of a craft, passed down and carried far, was as much a part of settling the country as land and labor were.
If you visit
The best way to appreciate this site is to look for its handiwork rather than its ruins. In downtown San Antonio, keep an eye out for the warm, buff-colored brick of older commercial buildings and landmarks; much of that material came from operations like Mackey's, and there is a real pleasure in recognizing the product of a specific place in the walls of a famous one.
Standing near the old works, try to picture the scale the marker describes — 150 acres of clay pits, woodlots feeding tens of thousands of cords into the kilns, a rail spur built for the single purpose of hauling brick to market. It was an entire landscape organized around one industry, and around it a small company town where workers lived and spent their tokens at the store.
This stop rewards travelers curious about how the Gilded Age actually got built. Pair it with a walk through historic San Antonio to close the loop between the factory and the finished city. Remember that a single order here once ran to seven million bricks — a number worth holding in your mind as you look at the buildings they became.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Nelson Mackey
Themes & tags
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