Q: I was on a tour of the Gamble house in Pasadena, Calif., and saw the most unusual deformed brick in a garden wall. The brick was twisted and looked more like random rocks than brick.

Q. I was on a tour of the Gamble house in Pasadena, California, and saw the most unusual deformed brick in a garden wall. The brick was twisted and looked more like random rocks than brick.

Q: I was on a tour of the Gamble house in Pasadena, California, and saw the most unusual deformed brick in a garden wall. The brick was twisted and looked more like random rocks than brick.

The brick facade, studded with deformed chunks that might have been hurled from a volcano, rises straight from the sidewalk to a scalloped roofline perfect for aiming cannons at the squalid ...