Alliance Clay Product Company

Brick manufacturing shaped this 71-acre complex on South Mahoning Avenue, just outside Alliance, Ohio. Founded in 1906 by James B. Wilcox, the Alliance Clay Product Company grew through three plants, built in 1906, 1914 and 1924, each with a similar layout of clay-handling, drying tunnels, kilns and storage. Eight beehive kilns remain at Plant No. 1, and five brick company houses from the 1920s still stand. By 1924 capacity reached 275,000 bricks daily. Paving bricks, especially the Speedway pavers, were the leading product as Ohio's roads expanded, and the firm also supplied face brick for churches, schools and hospitals, and for the Holland Tunnel and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York. The company employed about 340 workers by 1950 and closed in 1970 under the third generation of Wilcox leadership. Part of the property is now used for pallet making. The complex is valued as a representative regional industrial site.