what is the importance of brick?

Right off the bat in D'’Ambrosio's essay, he starts to describe a brick wall, so one can point out that brick must have some importance if it was picked to be included in the opening sentence. But then as the story continues, brick emerges as the major aspect of the entire scenery of the story. All the buildings were made of brick. The brick wasn'’t just any old brick though; it had character. Each pile of brick used to be something and had a story D'’Ambrosio was ready to tell the readers. An old hotel where a murder was committed and the Clinton Street family bar are just two of the many scenes D'’Ambrosio depicts starting with brick. Chicago is covered in brick whether it'’s new or old. Brick is the setting for the whole essay. D'’Ambrosio even uses terms that could be used to describe brick to describe a character'’s face: “"His upper body was a slablike mass, a plinth upon which his head rested; he had a chiseled nose and jaw, a hack-job scar of a mouth; his hands were thick and stubby"…” (p 70). He is so caught up in describing the scenery that he forgets to switch his vocabulary when he starts to describe a person...… or does he? I think D'’Ambrosio uses these terms to show that the people and the city of Chicago are one. They depend on each other, such as Al and George depend on the bar. The people and city are alike in so many ways when they are described in this essay: old, weathered, worn, chiseled, broken down, not what they used to be. Brick is shown here with meaning, character and importance. It is engrained in the city'’s history and stands as the main focus in D’Ambrosio'’s essay.