Veneklasen Brick Company

In 1848 Jan Veneklasen and his family emigrated from the Netherlands to Zeeland, in Michigan´s Dutch Kolonie. A brickmaker by trade, Veneklasen founded a brickyard within a year of his arrival - one of several he would eventually operate in Michigan, including the one formerly at this site. The mainstay of the Veneklasen Brick Company was its architectural bricks. Used primarily in houses, the color of these bricks - red, white, orange and brown - reflected the local clay of the yard where they were made. Veneklasen´s brickworks operated under several names over the years. It was a family business, with founder Jan Veneklasen´s descendants involved with the company, until it ceased operations in the mid-1920s.

[Back]: Michigan´s historic Dutch Kolonie is home to a unique style of brickwork known informally as "Veneklasen," named after the Veneklasen Brick Company. Veneklasen buildings are remarkable for their decorative facades, which typically feature cream-colored brick patterns set against contrasting red brick backgrounds. In building forms typical of nineteenth century American midwestern architecture, the distinctive polychromatic brickwork carried on masonry traditions from the Netherlands. Veneklasen brick was used in the construction of the houses of Dutch immigrants as well as churches, schools, civic buildings, and institutional buildings including Van Vleck and Voorhees halls at Hope College in Holland.