Gold Brick Mystery in Texas Houses

Threasa Brown lives in an Irving, Texas neighborhood that has a perplexing mystery. Many houses have one sole gold brick in the front wall. Here's what Threasa says:

"Most of the houses (built in the 1970's) in our neighborhood (including ours) has a single gold brick on the front exterior wall by the porch. I have tried searching the reason for why the houses were built that way but my searches have produced nothing but harry potter lego links. We were hoping that maybe you could help shed some light on this for us."

You can clearly see the gold brick. No way this was installed this close to the front door by mistake and in multiple houses. Photo credit: Threasa Brown

Threasa, I don't know if I can shed too much light on this at all. It's indeed a very distinctive brick and with it being on the front wall of the home near the front door that gives us a clue.

Here's what we know for sure:

• the brick in each house was put there intentionally
• the builder, or builder's foreman, must have seen it after the first or second house and then ALLOWED the practice to continue
• the brick was most likely placed by the same mason who did all the brickwork for all the houses in the neighborhood, or the builder had individual masons install the brick at his command

With all this data, it's safe to assume the brick represents a unique calling card of the builder and/or mason. My guess is it's a stamp, a tattoo of sorts that indicates the houses are the *gold* standard or are otherwise special.

There's a very remote possibility that behind the brick or inside the brick is some special magic token.

I think it adds tremendous character to your home and it should be celebrated.

Tim Carter