About

Josiah Schmidt started Historbrick in August 2019, as a project to retell history in a fun and engaging way. The real roots of Historbrick go back to the late 1990s, when Josiah, from the age of 12 onward, created a website displaying digital photos of a sprawling, brick-built city, which he called “San FranLego”. Josiah’s triple interests in Lego-building, macrophotography, and pre-modern history, developed together over the years until they finally intertwined in the form of Historbrick.

As a visual learner striving to help other visual learners, Josiah hopes that reading these historical narratives through amusing brick-built tableaus will cultivate a greater understanding of the past for people of all ages. Josiah, currently a PhD candidate (ABD) in the History Department of Washington University in St Louis, also intends to use these illustrated stories to help teach readers the fundamental skills of thinking like a historian.

To help this effort flourish, please consider being the de’Medici to our daVinci, and becoming a patron of this project via Patreon.