Brick House: A Nigerian Government Seat, a Commodores Hit and a Wrestler

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This episode follows a single phrase, brick house, through a Wikipedia disambiguation page and around the world. It starts with the literal meaning, a masonry house and the surname Brickhouse, then moves to official places: Brickhouse Station, a pastoral lease on Crown land in Western Australia; the government house in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, known as Brick House; and a London building called Brick House that was nominated for the Stirling Prize for architecture in 2006. On the U.S. National Register of Historic Places the name turns up from the Brick House on the Pike in Howard County, Maryland, to sites in Clifford and White Plains, Virginia, Cazenovia, New York, the Shelburne Museum in Vermont and Louisville, Kentucky. The hosts argue that brick was once a luxury that demanded kilns, skilled labor and capital, which is why the material became the building's name.

From there the phrase drifts into business and pop culture. Brickhouse Security sells the idea of a fortress, the Brickhouse Cooperative applies it to journalism built writer by writer, and Brickhouse Direct came from musician Jim Brickman playing on his own surname. The hosts describe semantic bleaching, where the literal meaning empties out and a mood moves in, as with the 1977 Commodores hit that turned the phrase into a compliment for a powerfully built person. The same words now name a 1997 hip hop EP by Socrates, a sculpture shown in Manhattan and at the University of Pennsylvania, a cigar brand and the professional wrestler Brickhouse Brown.

• Brickhouse Station in Western Australia is a pastoral lease of Crown land used for sheep or cattle.
• The government house in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, the seat of executive power, carries the name Brick House.
• A London building called Brick House was a 2006 nominee for the Stirling Prize.
• Musician Jim Brickman founded the e-commerce company Brickhouse Direct as a pun on his surname.
• Wrestler Brickhouse Brown, born in 1960 and died in 2018, took a ring name that mixed masonry with funk swagger.