Masonry & Tuckpointing in Northbrook, Illinois
Northbrook made 300,000 bricks a day. Then it built its own houses after the kilns went cold — which is the whole reason your wall needs a different conversation.
The town that made Chicago's brick and kept almost none of it
This is the best masonry story on the North Shore, and it has a punchline that most contractors would rather you did not hear.
A farm near what is now Lake-Cook and Waukegan Roads turned out to have excellent clay. The National Brick Company and the Illinois Brick Company set up there. Brickmakers built their own settlement beside the works, known as Bach Town. Families were moving here for brickyard work as early as 1893. Per the Village's own account, the yards were well established by the 1870s and prospered on the rebuilding that followed the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871.
At its peak, between 1915 and 1920, Northbrook was producing as many as 300,000 bricks a day.
And then it shipped them all away. That brick rebuilt Chicago. It did not build Northbrook — the village had 311 people when it incorporated and 1,265 by 1940. There was hardly anyone here to build for. The brick companies had closed by the 1950s, which is precisely when Northbrook finally started building houses: 1,265 people in 1940 became 11,635 by 1960 and 25,422 by 1970.
The clay under this town rebuilt a city. The houses on top of it went up after the kilns went cold. So if a contractor pitches you on "repointing the brick this town was made of," he has not checked the dates. We would rather tell you the real story, which is better anyway.
Your house is postwar, and that is the point
The numbers, plainly. In ZIP 60062, of roughly 17,909 units: 589 predate 1940 — about 3.3 percent. Only 6.1 percent predates 1950. Which means 93.9 percent was built in 1950 or later, with the single largest cohort being the 1970s at 3,968 units and 53.2 percent going up between 1960 and 1989.
So no, your house is not historic, and we are not going to sell you a heritage story about it.
But run the arithmetic that matters. Brick in this climate needs repointing every 25 to 30 years. A typical Northbrook house is 50 to 70 years old. That is past the cycle twice over — and in a great many cases it has never been repointed once.
That is the real Northbrook masonry problem. Not that the buildings are precious. That nobody has been paying attention to them.
Your house does not need lime mortar. Beware anyone who says it does.
You will read — including on this site, for other towns — that pre-1930 masonry sits in soft lime mortar, and that repointing it with hard Portland cement wrecks the brick. True. And irrelevant to your house.
A 1965 Northbrook ranch was built with Portland cement mortar, and Portland cement mortar is what belongs back in it. A contractor arriving with lime mortar for a postwar house is not demonstrating expertise. He is demonstrating that he read the same article you did.
The rule underneath both cases is the same: match what is already in the wall. On a 1910 bungalow that means lime. On a 1965 ranch it means Portland. Same principle, opposite answer. A mason who only knows one of them is wrong half the time — in this village, almost always.
Postwar brick is a different animal
Most postwar brick is veneer — a single layer of brick standing in front of a wood frame, tied back to it, with an air gap behind. That brick is not holding your house up. It is a rain screen, designed to let some water through and drain it out through weep holes at the base.
Corroding wall ties
The metal ties holding the brick to the frame have sat in a damp cavity for sixty years. When they fail, the veneer works loose from the building: bulging, walls that sound hollow, brick visibly pulled away. That is not a mortar problem, and repointing will not fix it.
Blocked weep holes
Those small gaps at the base are the only exit water has. They block with mortar droppings from the original build, with paint, with landscaping piled against the wall, with a patio poured later at the wrong height. Once water cannot leave the cavity it sits against the back of the brick and against your framing. Ask a mason to show you your weep holes. If nobody can find them, that is the answer.
The rusting lintel — the classic
The most common postwar masonry failure in the Chicago suburbs. The brick above a wide opening — a garage door, a picture window — is carried on a steel lintel. Water reaches the steel, it rusts, and rust occupies many times the volume of the steel it came from. The lintel swells and jacks the masonry above it upward.
You see a horizontal crack along the mortar line above the opening, brick that looks lifted or bowed, sometimes rust staining. Repointing that crack without addressing the lintel is cosmetic. The steel is still swelling. It comes back, and you have paid twice.
And the chimney, which is usually first
On a postwar house the chimney is often the only real masonry on the building — and the hardest-working. Above the roofline, exposed on all four sides, taking freeze-thaw from every direction while the walls below sit sheltered, with a flue carrying moisture from inside. Open joints near the top, a cracked crown, a leaning stack, white staining, loose brick. It is also the one masonry failure that is a safety question, not only a cost one.
Nobody is checking your mortar
Northbrook has no historic preservation commission. The Village's Boards & Commissions page lists nineteen bodies — Trustees, Arts, Fire & Police, Local Improvements, Community, Disability Inclusion, Electrical, Emergency Telephone Systems, Firefighters' Pension, the Rural Fire Protection District, Pedestrian & Bicycle, Plan Commission, Police Pension, Senior Services, Stormwater, Sustainability, TIF Joint Review, Zoning Board of Appeals and the Ad Hoc 125th Anniversary committee. Not one is preservation-related. The org chart mentions an Architectural Control Commission that does not appear on the live boards page — dormant, or a stale chart.
Northbrook also has zero National Register listings, and we found no local landmark program. Local press put it bluntly when an old building came down: there was no process in Northbrook law to slow or prevent its demolition, and it is not much different now — explicitly contrasting Northbrook against Glencoe, which has both a preservation commission and a demolition delay.
So: no Certificate of Appropriateness, no hearing, no delay. The diligence is entirely yours.
One thing we will not tell you
We will not tell you what your walls are made of. No source publishes a facade-material breakdown for Northbrook, and the Census does not collect it. What is documented is that the characteristic stock is 1950s ranch houses and 1960s churches, with mid-century modern recurring. Any contractor who tells you "Northbrook homes are brick" is reading a template, not your address.
Conditional and still useful: if your house has brick anywhere — elevations, a front face, a chimney, a stoop — and it went up between 1950 and 1989, it is decades past due. A mason in front of the wall settles it in a minute.
Questions worth more than a price per square foot
- Is this veneer or solid masonry? If he cannot tell you, he has not looked.
- Where are my weep holes, and are they open?
- What is the condition of the lintels over the garage and the big windows?
- Are the wall ties still holding? Any bulging or hollow-sounding areas?
- Which mortar mix, matched to what is in the wall now, at what hardness? The right answer is a Portland mix — but it should still be matched, not guessed.
- Which joint profile — and does it match the existing?
A mason who cannot answer those is not cheap. He is quoting a different job than the one your house needs.
Signs your masonry needs a look
- Mortar you can rake out with a house key, or that falls away as sand
- Joints noticeably recessed behind the face of the brick
- A horizontal crack above a garage door or picture window, brick above it looking lifted — a rusting lintel
- Veneer that bulges, sounds hollow, or has pulled away — corroded ties
- Weep holes blocked, or nowhere to be found
- Damp patches or white efflorescence on interior walls
- Spalling — brick faces flaking or popping off
- A stoop or steps pulling away from the house
- Chimney: open joints, a cracked crown, or a stack that is not plumb
Any of these on a wall built fifty years ago is worth attention before another freeze-thaw season. Chicago-area winters do the damage; the mortar just tells you first.
Northbrook and the surrounding area
Northbrook sits inland, west of Glencoe and north of Glenview, in the belt where the North Shore stops being old and starts being postwar. If your project is a greystone, a landmark facade or a full estate elevation instead, start with our greystone, landmark and estate work, compare tuckpointing in Glencoe or Glenview, or browse every area we serve across Chicagoland.
Questions Northbrook owners ask
Is my Northbrook house built from Northbrook brick?
Almost certainly not, and the timeline is the reason. Northbrook's brickyards were real and enormous: a farm near present-day Lake-Cook and Waukegan Roads had excellent clay, the National Brick Company and the Illinois Brick Company set up there, and production peaked between 1915 and 1920 at as many as 300,000 bricks a day. But that brick was shipped out — it prospered on rebuilding Chicago after the Fire of 1871. The village itself had 311 people when it incorporated and 1,265 by 1940. The brick companies had closed by the 1950s, which is precisely when Northbrook started building houses: 1,265 people in 1940 became 11,635 by 1960 and 25,422 by 1970. So the clay under this town rebuilt Chicago, and the houses on top of it went up after the kilns went cold. Anyone selling you 'we repoint the brick this town was made of' has not checked the dates.
My Northbrook house is not historic. Does it still need tuckpointing?
Almost certainly, and the reason is arithmetic rather than heritage. Brick in this climate generally runs 25 to 30 years between repointings. About 94 percent of Northbrook's housing was built in 1950 or later, and the single largest cohort is the 1970s at 3,968 units — so a typical Northbrook house is 50 to 70 years old. That is past the cycle twice over, and in many cases it has never been repointed at all. Historic towns get the masonry attention because the story is better. Northbrook has the opposite problem: nobody talks about its masonry, so nobody maintains it.
Should a mason use lime mortar on my 1960s Northbrook house?
No — and if someone offers to, that is a red flag rather than a mark of expertise. Historic pre-1930 masonry was laid in soft lime-based mortar, and repointing it with hard modern Portland cement destroys the brick. That argument is true and gets quoted constantly, but it does not apply to your house. A 1960s house was built with Portland cement mortar and Portland cement mortar is what belongs back in it. The principle underneath both cases is identical: match what is already in the wall. A mason who only knows one answer is wrong half the time, and in this village, almost always.
What is brick veneer and why does it change the job?
Most postwar brick is veneer: a single wythe of brick standing in front of a wood frame, tied back to it, with an air gap behind. Unlike solid historic masonry, veneer is not holding your house up — it is a rain screen. It is designed to let some water through and drain it back out through weep holes at the base, down the cavity behind. That design has consequences at sixty years old. The metal ties that hold the veneer to the frame corrode. The weep holes get blocked by mortar droppings, paint, landscaping or a patio poured later. And once water cannot leave the cavity it sits against the back of the brick and against the framing. So the questions on a Northbrook house are different from a historic facade: are the ties still doing their job, and can water still get out?
Why is the brick above my garage door or picture window cracking?
That is the single most common postwar masonry failure and it has a specific cause. The brick above a wide opening — a garage door, a picture window — is carried on a steel lintel. When water reaches that steel it rusts, and rust occupies many times the volume of the steel it came from. The lintel expands and jacks the masonry above it upward. You see a horizontal crack along the mortar line above the opening, brick that looks lifted or bowed, sometimes rust staining. Repointing that crack without dealing with the lintel is cosmetic; it will come back, because the steel is still swelling. Ask any mason who quotes this what they intend to do about the lintel itself.
Does Northbrook review exterior masonry work?
No. Northbrook has no historic preservation commission — its Boards and Commissions page lists nineteen bodies and not one of them is preservation-related. The Village org chart mentions an Architectural Control Commission that does not appear on the live boards page, which suggests it is dormant or the chart is stale. The village has zero National Register listings and we found no local landmark program. Local press put it plainly when an old building came down: there was no process in Northbrook law to slow or prevent its demolition, and it is not much different now — explicitly contrasting Northbrook with Glencoe, which has both a preservation commission and a demolition delay. Practically: nobody reviews your mortar here.
Is my Northbrook house even brick?
We genuinely do not know, and neither does anyone else writing about this town. No source publishes a dominant residential facade material for Northbrook, and the Census does not collect it. What is documented is that the characteristic stock is 1950s ranch houses and 1960s churches, with mid-century modern recurring. Any contractor telling you what Northbrook houses are made of is reading a template, not your address. What we can say is conditional and still useful: if your house has brick or brick veneer anywhere — full elevations, a front face, a chimney, a stoop — and it went up between 1950 and 1989, it is decades past the usual repointing cycle. A mason standing in front of the wall settles it in a minute.
What about the chimney?
On a postwar house the chimney is usually the first thing to fail and often the only real masonry on the building. It stands above the roofline, exposed on all four sides, with no shelter from anything, and it takes freeze-thaw from every direction while the walls below stay comparatively protected. Add a flue carrying moisture and combustion gases from the inside and you have the hardest-working masonry on the house. Look for open or missing joints near the top, a crown that is cracked, a stack that reads as leaning, white staining, or loose brick. A chimney is also the one masonry failure with a safety dimension rather than just a cost one.
Why was Northbrook called Shermerville?
It incorporated in 1901 as the Village of Shermerville, with about 60 homes and 311 residents, named for Frederick Schermer — a German immigrant who donated the land for the area's first railroad station. He is a different man from Joel Sterling Sherman, who bought 159 acres at $1.25 an acre after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago; the two names get conflated regularly. By 1921 residents felt the Shermerville name carried a bad reputation, owing to rowdy gatherings at its five saloons, so a naming contest was held. Edward Landwehr, the US postmaster and son of the German immigrant family Landwehr Road is named for, submitted the winning entry: Northbrook, after the West Fork of the North Branch of the Chicago River. It was adopted in 1923, when the village had about 500 people. John Hughes later used the fictional Shermer, Illinois in his films, taken from the old name.
Is MasonryPros.us a masonry contractor?
No. MasonryPros.us is a free matching service operated by Media Express LLC, a Chicago digital agency founded in 1995. We do not perform masonry work and we have no office in Northbrook. You describe the job once, and we match you with local contractors who do that specific type of work. There is no obligation to hire.
What are the warning signs on a postwar Northbrook house?
Mortar you can rake out with a house key or that falls away as sand. Joints recessed noticeably behind the face of the brick. A horizontal crack above a garage door or picture window, with the brick above it looking lifted — that is a rusting lintel. Brick veneer that bulges, or sounds hollow, or has moved away from the wall — that is corroded ties. Weep holes at the base of the wall that are blocked or that you cannot find at all. Damp or white efflorescence on interior walls. Faces flaking or popping off, which is spalling. A stoop or steps pulling away from the house. And on the chimney: open joints, a cracked crown, or a stack that is not plumb.