East Dundee's Brickyard Roots and What They Mean for Old Windows
East Dundee was first settled by Joseph Russell and platted, along with West Dundee, in the early 1840s, though East Dundee didn't incorporate as its own village until 1871 -- four years after West Dundee did. That same year, 1871, German immigrant David Haeger became part owner of the Dundee brickyard that had been digging clay from the Fox River bank since 1852, and after the Great Chicago Fire that brickyard shipped bricks into Chicago to help rebuild the city before Haeger Potteries eventually turned to tile and, by 1914, art pottery -- a business that ran for 145 years until 2016.
A Village Platted Before Its First Charter
Homes built in East Dundee during the three decades between the early-1840s platting and the 1871 incorporation sit in a building stock old enough that original window openings were framed for double-hung wood sash long before any standardized replacement-window sizing existed, much like the brickyard's own hand-set masonry predates modern building materials. Confirming actual opening dimensions on one of these older East Dundee homes matters more than it would on a house built during the brickyard's later, more industrial 20th-century years.