Sylvanus Johnson – Mr. Red Brick.

Sylvanus Johnson was a Connecticut native, born November 12, 1813, who worked in his father’s brickyard before moving to Iowa City. I like to call him Mr. Red Brick since it was his brickyard in Outlot 24 – at the corner of Burlington and Gilbert Streets (see map below) – that made much of the building material used in the earliest days of The Red Brick Campus. Click here to read all about The Red Brick Campus.

Johnson was one of Iowa City’s earliest settlers, arriving here in 1839. From his obituary in The Iowa Citizen – January 10, 1902 – we find this info…

In truth, settling in Iowa City was not in Sylvanus’ original plans. Author Charles Ray Aurner explains…

The Honey War was a bloodless territorial dispute in 1839 between Iowa Territory and Missouri over their border. The dispute over a 10-mile-wide strip running the entire length of the border, caused by unclear wording in the Missouri Constitution on boundaries, misunderstandings over the survey of the Louisiana Purchase, and a misreading of Native American treaties, was ultimately decided by the United States Supreme Court (1849) in Iowa’s favor. The decision was to affirm a nearly 30-mile jog in the nearly straight line border between extreme southeast Iowa and northeast Missouri at Keokuk, Iowa that is now Iowa’s southernmost point. Before the issue was settled, militias from both sides faced each other at the border, a Missouri sheriff collecting taxes in Iowa was incarcerated, and three trees containing beehives were cut down.

Click here to read the full story about the 1839 Honey War between Iowa and Missouri.

Once here, Sylvanus got right to work, doing what he knew best, making bricks. He soon set up shop along Gilbert Street just south of Burlington, and his first bricks were made on April 15, 1840, going into a boot store building on Iowa Avenue just west of Dubuque Street. Over the next few decades, Johnson was supplying bricks for every need from chimneys to buildings.

We call him Mr. Red Brick, because his bricks were used in every building built on campus between 1840 and 1875, from the interior walls of Old Capitol, to the Mechanics Academy, to both South and North Hall on University Square. Read more here.

When Sylvanus married his Connecticut sweetheart, Emily Bradley, in 1845, he had already been purchasing large pieces of land north of Iowa City in order to supply adequate firewood for his brick-making furnaces. By 1847, he owned 600 acres and in 1857 built a beautiful home there which still stands today (see pic below).

The **Sylvanus Johnson House**, also known as **Pinehurst**, is a historic building located at 2155 Prairie du Chien in Iowa City. It was constructed in 1857 with bricks Johnson made, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (1990). The floor plan is very similar to the 18th century double-hipped roof houses in Johnson’s native Connecticut, and is the first house in the area to have a mansard roof.

But, before Sylvanus built his dream home in 1857, he and his wife, Emily, lived in this small brick home located at 412 N. Dubuque Street (see map above). It’s believed that Sylvanus built this home in 1847 with bricks from his own brickyard. More details here.