The Brick Lady of St. Louis

Outside/In

NHPR

Society & Culture, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Nature, Science

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ever since a tornado tore through one of St. Louis, Missouri’s poorest neighborhoods, there are piles of bricks all over the place. It’s not just a debris problem. Bricks in St. Louis have a long and complicated history here – the darling of many historic preservationists and a good source of profit to just as many demolition crews. Producer Marina Henke spent a week in North City, tagging along with a brick layer who’s racing against the clock to build back homes. Can North City keep its bricks? Should they even try? Featuring Natalie Hughes, RJ Koscielniak, and Rasheen Aldridge. Produced by Marina Henke. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS The STL Vacancy Collaborative runs a Demolition Dashboard, showing all approved and completed demolitions in St. Louis City. The 2011 documentary Brick By Chance and Fortune provides a more in-depth look at brick’s history in St. Louis, including its architectural variance. For a comprehensive social and economic history of St. Louis check out Walter Johnson’s The Broken Heart of America. The apocryphal headline and its report of a struggling St. Louis still exists in the New York Times’ archives: In St. Louis Even the Old Bricks Are Leaving Town. In 2017, the podcast 99% Invisible took a closer look at St. Louis brick theft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide.
0:05.4	I'm Nate Hedgy.
0:08.4	On the afternoon of May 16th, a message crackled across the radios of eastern Missouri.
0:15.5	National Weather Service in St. Louis has issued a tornado warning for.
0:19.5	St. Louis City in east central Missouri,
0:22.2	flying debris will be dangerous to those caught without shelter.
0:25.7	Local TV stations jumped on the story.
0:28.3	We have crews on the way, and we hope to bring you much more coming up very shortly.
0:33.1	And videos started popping up all over the Internet.
0:37.3	Oh, my God.
0:39.3	We're in a tornado.
0:42.0	We're literally in a fucking tornado, dude.
0:48.1	A few minutes later, Natalie Hughes jumped into her truck.
0:56.3	I came down like immediately after it happened because my client started calling me.
1:00.9	So I'm trying to get to them and see, you know, how bad it is.
1:05.4	When she pulled up to the northern part of St. Louis City, outer window, she saw a disaster zone. You couldn't get down not one alley,
1:13.9	barely a street because of trees that toppled over. It was debris everywhere. An EF3
1:20.1	tornado had just torn through town. Winds had maxed out at over 150 miles per hour, five people died.
1:28.6	I was in all. I couldn't even put it in words other than devastation, to be honest.
1:33.9	And littered across the streets, spilling out of half-crumbled houses, were piles and piles of bricks.
1:42.5	Everywhere. Everywhere.
1:45.5	Everywhere.
	...

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