**Note: This is the first of a many-part series.
On 9/22/18, we drove to Las Vegas, NM, to tour the Harvey House that is being restored there. The Harvey House had been abandoned for quite a few years, and recently it was purchased and is being restored.
This week’s post will focus on the brickwork around the outside of the building. The contractors tore all of the original bricks out, placed them aside, redid the sand, and then laid the bricks back down. So far, the southern wing of the building has been completed.
The contractors restoring the building intentionally left some of the bricks face up so that people could see the origins of these bricks. Most of them came from Kansas, Colorado or New Mexico. This makes sense, as the Las Vegas, NM, Harvey House was on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (ATSF) railroad, which cut across Kansas and Colorado before dropping south.

Map of where I found bricks. Original source: https://www.kshs.org/, red x’s added by me
In Kansas, there were bricks from Pittsburg,

Nesch Brick, Pittsburg, KS
…Coffeyville, (which gained fame later on for being the unfortunate spot for one of the largest hailstones ever found)

Vitrified Brick and Tile Co, Coffeyville, KS

Different (perhaps) older stamp
…and Neodesha. All three of these towns are in the southeastern corner of the state.

Verdgris Valley Vitrified (VVV) Brick and Tile Co, Neodesha, KS
In Colorado, there were bricks from Trinidad,
…and from the Denver. Interestingly enough, there is an old catalog available online from the Denver Firebrick Co (DFC).

Denver Firebrick Co., Denver, CO
In New Mexico, bricks came from Las Vegas, though, I cannot find any information on HR.

HR in Las Vegas, NM
I got distracted while writing this post, as I found a wealth of information on brick companies. Brick Names provides a great lookup tool for bricks, though H&R wasn’t in there.
Thank you for reading my post.