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Jul 10, 2023

This Buffalo company finds new uses for old bricks and stones

To Scott Smith, old bricks or cobblestones are like gems. And he's made a successful – and unusual – career out of mining them from almost any construction or demolition site from Maine to Chicago.

To Scott Smith, old bricks or cobblestones are like gems.

And he's made a successful – and unusual – career out of mining them from almost any construction or demolition site from Maine to Chicago.

Scott Smith, general manager at Experienced Brick & Stone, talks about how bricks and stone blocks that would have otherwise been headed for a landfill, become building materials for new projects at his Buffalo-based business that has developed a following around the nation.

Smith, 60, is the owner and general manager of Experienced Brick & Stone, a Buffalo-based company that reclaims historic hardscape construction materials, cleans them and then resells them for new projects across the country.

That includes old bricks or cobblestones from buildings or streets, as well as historic white marble, granite, Medina sandstone, pavers, curbing, stone slabs or foundation stones – but not simple concrete.

The goal is to repurpose it in its current state, Smith said, although that could include cutting it to fit a customer's needs, such as for a thin facade.

"Seeing all these materials landfilled and crushed just didn't make any sense to me," Smith said.

Scott Smith, general manager at Experienced Brick & Stone, with some of the recovered materials ready to be repurposed in the yard at Experienced Brick & Stone in Buffalo, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022. These marble curb stones used to line the parking lot at the former Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

Experienced Brick is one of only a handful of such reclamation companies around the country, and the only one in New York State, that actively engage in such work at any scale, Smith said.

Founded in 2010, the company does more than 90% of its business outside of upstate New York, including shipping to Virginia, Florida, Texas and California. It employs up to 15 during its peak activity in the summer.

It's typically brought in by contractors or demolition firms working on construction projects involving older buildings, roads, bridges, streetscapes or parks that need to dispose of building materials that are being removed or replaced. Those firms remove the materials and then call in Experienced Brick to collect them.

Sometimes the firm gets its products for free, because the contractor is just looking to get rid of it. But if extra work is needed to extract and save the materials, then Smith's company might pay for that. "It really depends on the ease with which the contractor can get the materials to us," Smith said.

A custom-built scoop was designed by Scott Smith, general manager at Experienced Brick & Stone, to help sift out blocks and bricks from other construction debris that arrives at Experienced Brick & Stone in Buffalo, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022.

For example, the firm recently reclaimed all the curbing from the parking lot of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, as well as the older marble steps from the building.

A few years ago, it reclaimed cobblestones from underneath the road surfaces approaching the Peace Bridge, and also from underneath Fuhrmann Boulevard in South Buffalo a decade ago.

When Ellicott Development Co. took down a section of the wall from the former Our Lady of Lourdes Church on Main Street as part of a larger redevelopment project, Experienced Brick received the 1-foot thick stone.

"When someone else wants to do repairs, that stone is available," Smith said. "We'll take the old stone, cut the base, and let them stick it on."

And it will reclaim bricks from ADM's planned demolition of the damaged Great Northern silo complex.

On the other side of the business, Experienced Brick provided the bricks for the new pavilion in Tonawanda along the Erie Canal, and the cobblestones used at Mariners Park, underneath the Niagara Thruway in a block bordered by Lower Terrace and Franklin, Erie and Seneca streets. It also sent curbing to Colonial Williamsburg, which was redoing its cobblestone streets, and supplied bricks for streetscape in Canandaigua.

"It's cool that these things that I see as being very valuable are out there being used again and other people get to enjoy them," said Smith, a North Carolina native who has lived in Buffalo since he was a child. "Most of our work is done on very high-end private estates, but every once in a while, we get to do a project like Tonawanda or Colonial Williamsburg, where it's used in a very public space. Then everybody gets to enjoy it."

Detail of the diamond blade table saw in the cutting shop at Experienced Brick & Stone in Buffalo, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022.

The biggest sellers overall are street bricks and cobblestones, but demand can vary from year to year,” Smith said.

And the type of stone that’s desired often depends on where it’s going.

“In Buffalo, Cleveland or Syracuse, they need Medina to replicate,” Smith said. “In Boston, it’s all granite, and it has to be a particular size and shape.”

Smith started the company almost by accident after selling his previous business, an energy efficiency firm, to Wendel Cos. He was "looking for something to do and decided to build a house in the Arts and Crafts style as a personal project. A friend suggested using reclaimed street bricks, so he obtained a truckload from the city and had them delivered to his project site, where they were stacked on pallets.

But instead of finishing the project, he found that people "kept coming by" and asking to buy the bricks. So he started a new business that has grown beyond his expectations.

Thin cut bricks that will be used for a brick facade in a residential construction project sit on a pallet in the cutting room at Experienced Brick & Stone in Buffalo, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022.

The company is based at 3370 Broadway in Cheektowaga, with its primary storage yard for materials at 268 Central Ave. in Buffalo's Lovejoy neighborhood.

In May, he expanded his venture, teaming up with a partner, Sheri Carter, to purchase John H. Black Co., a 126-year-old Buffalo brick supplier that has provided bricks for most of the major projects in the area over the past century. That means he will now sell both new and used brick, capturing both sides of the market. And with Carter as the majority owner, they are seeking certification as a woman-owned business.

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