Construction crews digging through asphalt in downtown Gainesville have unearthed a little bit of history.
Kristen Howard, Mainstreet Manager for the City of Gainesville, said they've discovered hundreds - if not thousands - of bricks that were part of the original road around the downtown square.
"If you actually go down Bradford Street, you can see where the bricks are [exposed] beside the curb," Howard said. "They are all around the square underneath [the pavement]."
Howard said they had an inkling the historic brick might be uncovered, mainly because they had discovered similar bricks during other streetscape projects.
"This has happened once before, but I don't know that the word got out about it," Howard said.
For whatever reason, the discovery this time around has set off a good bit of interest on social media with people mainly speculating on the maker of the bricks. According to Howard, some of the bricks appear to have the name - or part of the name - AUGUSTA on them.
"I'm getting feedback on Facebook 'I have an Augusta brick,' 'My mom has one of those,'" Howard said.
The goal now is to clean up the bricks and turn some of them over to the North Georgia History Center so officials there can start doing some research. After that, the bricks will be incorporated into one or more projects in the downtown Gainesville area. Howard said they don't have a specific plan for them just yet.
"Really, they could go anywhere, we could do anything," Howard said.
You can continue to follow the story of the Gainesville bricks on the Downtown Gainesville Facebook page.
