TIL how many bricks went into the Empire State Building

I was watching a show about old buildings and they said it took ten million bricks... I always figured it was a lot but that number blew my mind. Found it on a history channel thing about the 1930s. Makes you think about the crews that laid all that, right? Anyone know of another big project with a crazy brick count?

3 comments

3 Comments

ivanbell1mo ago

That's a tough number to even imagine.

blake7921mo ago

Yeah that scale is wild. I saw a doc where they talked about the on-site kilns like @harper914 mentioned, and they'd use local materials. Some parts have bricks stamped with the maker's mark and the date, which is kinda cool. Makes it feel a bit more human even though the project was massive.

harper9141mo ago

Read somewhere that the Great Wall of China used around 3.8 billion bricks in some sections. The scale is just hard to picture. They had whole kilns set up along the route to make them on site.