Anyway, Wilson covered all that in The Victorians, his bestseller of 10 years ago that dealt with the 19th-century's outerworld of iron, brick and cotton bales.
After testing several structural designs he settled on the combination of cast iron, brick, sandstone and granite.
Designed by Jesse Hartley and Philip Hardwick, it was opened in 1846, and was the first structure in Britain to be built from cast iron, brick and stone, with no structural wood.
The lighthouse at Saugerties, once a major manufacturing center for paper, iron, bricks and bluestone, is one of the oldest on the river.
Arthington, which was settled by migrants from Georgia and the Carolinas from 1869 onward with the assistance of the English philanthropist Robert Arthington, was rich in these fascinating edifices, constructed of wood, corrugated iron and brick.
Guided by Owen, he has been toiling over an array of huge dinosaur models, as well as those of other extinct reptiles and amphibians, which he has cast in concrete over frames of iron and brick.
There's a long, low building with different facades so it looks like a series of buildings that grew up over time -- a suggestion of cast iron here, brick face there.
He wants to follow up the work of the French physiologist Bichat, who held the theory that all living bodies "must be regarded as consisting of certain primary webs or tissues, out of which the various organs - heart, brain, lungs and so on - are compacted, as the various proportions of a house are built up in various proportions of wood, iron, stone, brick, zinc and the rest".
That's when dappled iron-spot brick was introduced.
Dial, meanwhile, poured iron, loaded bricks, welded pipe, mixed concrete, and delivered ice.
Boards gleam, iron shines, bricks are warmed by the light from large leaded windows.
