Definition of "bricks and mortar" []

• Buildings and property for the conduct of business, particularly in the sale of retail goods to the general public. Used to contrast an internet-based sales operation that lacks customer-oriented store fronts and a "traditional" one for which most capital investment might be in the building infrastructure. (noun)

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• "I spared him the sight of the chess-board of bricks and mortar into which the speculative builder has turned acre after acre north of Merton High Street."
• "Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider than religious systems, and though dogmas may hamper, they cannot absolutely repress its growth: build walls around the living tree as you will, the bricks and mortar have by and by to give way before the slow and sure operation of the sap."
• "The devotion which the populace has for the bricks and mortar of which it is composed is such that at the unwalling, the fragments are immediately carried off by the crowd, and the foreigners (gli oltremontani) take them home as so many sacred relics ...."