Chicago is an architecture city, with locals and visitors alike flocking to landmarks by Frank Lloyd Wright, Daniel Burnham, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and many more. Yet, until recently, one of the most ubiquitous architectural elements wasn’t quite getting its due: brick. Will Quam started the Instagram account @brickofchicago in 2016, posting his own photos of brick structures from all around the city and its suburbs, and the account quickly accumulated tens of thousands of followers.

Ten years later, Quam has a new career as a writer, photographer, researcher, and tour guide, all stemming from building blocks made of clay. This spring marks the publication of his first book, Fire and Clay: How Bricks Reveal the Hidden History of Chicago, from The University of Chicago Press. He hopes it will spread the gospel of brick to more Chicagoans as well as architecturally curious folks elsewhere.

After introducing readers to the material itself, the book moves chronologically, looking at different eras of brick style. “In the 1920s and early ’30s, people used colorful and textural bricks to make buildings feel old, like they’d been plucked out of the European countryside,” Quam says. “In the ’90s, bricks became almost cartoonish, and architects treated them almost like paint. Today, brick is typically sleek and modern, with dark, metallic tones, and it’s used in a lot of industrially inspired spaces.”

Quam interviewed architects, preservation experts, masons, architectural historians, and mortar and brick manufacturers. One of his favorite interviews was with architect Carol Ross Barney, who is well known for co-designing Chicago’s Riverwalk. “In the ’80s and ’90s, she designed these really fun, vibrant brick buildings, like the post office in suburban Glendale Heights that uses blue glazed bricks, along with red and buff bricks, [that] make the building look like an American flag,” Quam says. “She also designed several schools that use colorful brick in a very expressive way.”

The theme of historic preservation runs through the book. Quam says understanding mortar is particularly crucial, as typical modern-day mortar is denser and less permeable than historic mortar. “The [modern] mortar is stronger than the brick,” Quam says. This keeps the older brick from expanding and contracting with freeze-thaw cycles, which eventually leads to cracking. “I notice it all the time, and it’s really unfortunate,” he adds. The Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church in Chicago’s Logan Square—“a beautiful redbrick, spiky, Gothic church,” Quam says—had its facade repointed in the 1990s with new mortar, which wreaked havoc on the building. Ultimately, helped by a grant from the city and funds raised from the congregation, the church underwent a successful restoration with the help of a preservation architect and a preservation mason, who designed a custom mortar that would work well with the existing brick.

Quam’s new, brick-paved career path isn’t too surprising if you dig into his life story. A St. Paul, Minnesota, native who moved to Chicago to teach theater in schools, Quam was always interested in architecture. His great-grandfather was John Entenza, a magazine editor who initiated the influential Case Study House program in the 1940s, commissioning designs from Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eero Saarinen, among others. Quam’s father served in the Minnesota legislature, so he grew up visiting the Minnesota State Capitol, a revered Beaux-Arts–inspired structure designed by Cass Gilbert. Quam is the book’s main photographer, and it includes more than 100 images. He hopes it will reach both architecture nerds and people who don’t think brick is interesting at all.