The Brickyard That Rebuilt Chicago
First settled by Joseph Russell, East and West Dundee were both platted in the early 1840s, with East Dundee incorporating in 1871, four years after its neighbor. That same year, a brickyard already operating along the Fox River since 1852 -- digging its clay straight from the riverbank -- gained a new part owner in German immigrant David Haeger, and after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 the yard shipped bricks into Chicago to help rebuild it; the business, later known as Haeger Potteries, began producing art pottery in 1914 and operated for 145 years, from 1871 to 2016.
When the Clay Under the House Made the House
East Dundee is the one town in this area where the link between soil and structure is direct and documented: the same riverbank clay that Haeger's brickyard dug and fired into the bricks that helped rebuild Chicago is part of the same Kane County glacial-till clay that sits under East Dundee's foundations today. That clay still behaves the way clay behaves -- expanding when it takes on moisture and shrinking as it dries out -- which is exactly the seasonal movement a foundation evaluation has to account for.