Chicago loves people who look up—the hopeful dreamers, the skyline gawkers, the “Isn’t that the John Hancock?” types. But Will Quam? He prefers to look straight ahead toward a different muse: the humble brick. Have you ever wondered why bricks on the sides and backs of many Chicago buildings look so rough-hewn and weathered? Quam could wax poetic about the Chicago Common Brick: blocks made with clay harvested from the Chicago River. Or maybe you’re curious about glossy citrus-colored bricks brightening up your neighborhood? Quam could tell you all about the haphazard glazing techniques of the 1900s, which imparted those bricks with vibrant, brushstroke-like coloring.
Under the moniker Brick of Chicago, Quam has turned a longtime fascination with masonry into a citywide walking tour enterprise—proving that the smallest details can tell the biggest stories. In a city long sliced and stitched by redlining and segregation, Quam has found that brick can transcend those invisible boundaries, binding Chicago’s neighborhoods into a story just as colorful and textured as the bricks that built them.
“Brick can be a guide to make connections across the city,” Quam says. “You’ll find the same red brick in Lincoln Park as you will in Pilsen, and you’ll find the same colorful, textural brick in Rogers Park as you will in South Shore.”
When Quam tells me Brick of Chicago’s origin story, he jokingly refers to the context as “scaffolding.” But he’s not wrong: Each chapter of his life has served as another brace or beam for the reality he’s built today. Growing up in Saint Paul, MN, Quam was transfixed by architecture from an early age—a passion fostered by his parents’ frequent crosstown drives spent admiring oft-overlooked details in local buildings. Quam’s zeal for the topic only intensified when he moved to Chicago in 2014 for a job teaching theater in Chicago Public Schools.
Quam realized that not only was brick everywhere—textile-inspired inlays adorning the facade of the school where he worked, glimmering yellow brick bedecking the outside of his neighborhood’s hospital—but it was also an aesthetic mile marker in time. While he had once thought bricks were restricted to straightforward red prisms—dictionary definition bricks—he realized that brick glazes, bonds and sizes symbolize major developments in policy, design and development. A life-defining moment arrived when he discovered On Looking by Alexandra Horowitz, a meditation on the power of attention and perspective, which helped him embrace his perception superpower: seeing the world through brick-and-mortar.
“Everything in the world is designed or created in some way, whether that’s by accident or intention or force of nature,” Quam says. “Even in more mundane buildings, there is design; everything has been chosen for a particular reason—not only the great buildings by great architects. Everything can be appreciated when viewed in its context.”
In 2016, Quam launched Brick of Chicago—an Instagram account using photographs of bricks as a springboard for discussions about design, activism and the people of Chicago—from the basement of the Northlight Theater, where he was running a summertime theater camp for middle schoolers. In April 2020—after the pandemic prematurely ended the school year and, in turn, his teaching career—Quam produced his first virtual “History of Brick Architecture in Chicago” tour for 60 people via Zoom. Channeling his thespian background, Quam found a way to turn an otherwise dry subject into something downright captivating.
“My job is not to be the smartest person in the room,” Quam says. “My job is to give you the information in an exciting, digestible way, to make you look closer and ask more questions.”
Building off the success of his inaugural virtual tour, Quam began offering in-person walking tours throughout Chicago in 2021. Jump cut to 2025: Bricks are now his nine-to-five—through walking tours, private tours and commercial photography. Quam now hosts public walking (and sometimes bike) tours in 11 different neighborhoods, from Bronzeville and Beverly to Rogers Park and Noble Square.
Quam is grateful—but not necessarily surprised—that Brick of Chicago has resonated so deeply. “Chicagoans really love their city and are prone to find new ways to appreciate it,” he says confidently.
Quam will have a new offering come next year: Fire and Clay: How Bricks Reveal the Hidden History of Chicago, a book expanding upon his inaugural virtual brick tour, will be released via The University of Chicago Press in April 2026. Quam will continue to host Brick of Chicago neighborhood walking tours and tickets are on sale now for the buyer’s choice of $25—plus a $17 option for those who can’t afford a full-price ticket.
In a city obsessed with its skyline, Will Quam is teaching Chicagoans to love what’s beneath it. He calls it an act of noticing, but what Quam really documents is connection—between past and present, materials and maker, city and citizen. And in that, he’s reminding Chicago that every piece of this place has something to say.