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I am looking for help or guidance with something located on my parents 100 plus year old (we believe early 1900's, maybe earlier) brick home. They live in IL, just east of St. Louis, MO and have owned their home almost 30 years. We have never found out what a symbol on the outside of the house (where the chimney is) means. The symbol looks like a block lower-case "m" with the center leg of the "m" longer than the two side legs. And all of the legs end with crosses on them. Any information you can provide would be most helpful as my parents are thinking about downsizing soon and I would love to be able to answer this long standing question for them.

enter image description here

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    The photo would help (I removed your email address from the post - trust me, it's a spam vacuum). If you upload it to an image sharing site or an online file sharing service you can post the link here and someone will edit it into the question.
    – Comintern
    May 8, 2015 at 12:47
  • Thank you! I made the picture I have my profile picture, so hopefully that helps, too!
    – Jessica
    May 8, 2015 at 13:21
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    Looks like an upside-down Golgotha, but it wouldn't make much sense.
    – o0'.
    May 8, 2015 at 13:45
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    To whomever used the reason of trivia as a vote to close.... hah, I've wasted over 2 hours to no avail trying to find this symbol....
    – CGCampbell
    May 8, 2015 at 17:13
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    I appreciate any help and my family and I have researched with no luck, too. I'm beginning to think that whoever had the house built last name began with an "M" and this is just a fancy way of showing it. We've never had any luck with another explanation. <sigh>
    – Jessica
    May 9, 2015 at 4:01

1 Answer 1

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It looks like a stylisation in brick of the three golden globes of the pawn broker. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawnbroker

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  • I'm not sure, why would they have used crosses, instead of squares?
    – o0'.
    May 12, 2015 at 15:48
  • Crosses are a good match for a 3x3 circle
    – Samuel Russell
    May 12, 2015 at 22:08

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