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Pre-prohibition Brewery Structures
In the late 1800s, bottled beer became more popular although it didn't account for more than a quarter of national production until after the repeal of prohibition. Some brewers pursued the bottled beer market more than others. Milwaukee and St. Louis brewers are especially well known as early bottled beer producers. The 1862 beer tax law required a paid tax stamp to be affixed to every barrel of beer produced in view of a tax inspector. The tax law required that beer not be removed from a brewery except in barrels with valid tax stamps. In practice this meant that beer had to be put into barrels and moved to a separate building before being put in bottles. In the late 1800s, measuring gages on pipes were allowed for tax purposes but bottling still required a completely separate structure. Larger breweries, especially in the Midwest started building elaborate bottling buildings in the late 1890s. They were outfitted with the latest automatic bottling and bottle washing technology. Many breweries in eastern cities never sold bottled beer. Brewery bottle houses have been relatively adaptable structures. Most surviving bottle houses were among the last buildings constructed at their respective breweries. As such they were built with more modern materials and techniques. They are usually one or two stories in height. Bottle houses or departments were often as ornamented or more so than other brewery buildings. Images of bottle houses were frequently used in advertisements. Their floor plans and equipment were similar enough to other industrial structures that they were easily reused for other types of manufacturing or for storage. Bottle houses are the only surviving structures of a number of brewery campuses.
Ferd. Heim Brewery Bottle House, Kansas City Missouri
The Ferd. Heim bottle house is the only part of the pre-prohibition Ferd. Heim brewery that has not undergone extensive modifications. The bottling plant is one of a few brewery component buildings that are listed individually on the National Register of Historic Places in the US. These component structures are listed despite the fact that the bulk of their associated brewery buildings have been demolished or altered. The Heim brewery was closed in 1920 and never reopened as a brewery. Several brewery buildings were demolished in the 1930s to make way for a viaduct. The rest of the existing brewery buildings are separated from the bottling plant by the viaduct and are being used by food processing companies. The bottle house was unused and empty in 2018.
Pabst brewery bottle house Milwaukee Wisconsin
The Pabst brewery in Milwaukee was an innovator and early adopter of bottling technology and bottled beer. The size and opulence of the Pabst bottling plant reflects this. The bottle house uses the same cream-colored brick and architectural motifs as the rest of the Pabst brewery. Bottling technology was advancing rapidly at the end of the 1800s and early 1900s. Pasteurization was adopted by American brewers that sold bottled beer in the 1880s. This helped extend beer's shelf life which made shipping beer more practical. The Crown Cap bottle was invented in 1892 which solved the long-standing problem of cheaply and reliably sealing beer bottles. Crown Cap bottles were only possible because of advances in the uniform manufacture of glass bottles. The pages of brewers' journals from the period are filled with advertisements for recently invented bottle filling and bottle washing machines. Many brewers never sold beer in bottles, especially those in eastern cities. Bottled beer sales were less than a quarter of total beer sales before 1919. The Pabst bottling plant, along with the rest of the Pabst brewery campus has been redeveloped. It now houses apartments.
Eberhardt and Ober bottling department, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
The Eberhardt and Ober brewery is one of a few pre-prohibition breweries in the US that have been reoccupied by brewers after long periods of disuse. The Eberhardt and Ober brewery resumed making beer in 1933 and operated until the early 1950s when its buildings were sold to a salvage company. The Pennsylvania Brewing Company resumed brewing beer on the campus in 1986. The scale of contemporary craft brewing is much smaller than that of the pre-prohibition industrial brewers. In most cases, when contemporary brewers reoccupy pre-prohibition brewery structures, they only use a fraction of the original brewery campus space. This appears to be the case with the Penn brewery. It was unclear what, if any, purpose the old bottle house was being used for by the new brewing company in 2018.
The delivery and distribution of product was a major concern of brewers before national prohibition. Beer distributors, which were required by the laws repealing prohibition, hardly existed before 1933. Breweries maintained fleets of carriages and then trucks to deliver beer. Carriage houses and stables for horses were often parts of brewery campuses. Carriage houses were usually single-story structures with large doors and open floor plans. They were easily adapted to other uses. In many cases they are unremarkable structures and are the only surviving elements of brewery campuses. The Terra Haute Brewing Company's stables have been repurposed as a restaurant in one example. Larger breweries built distribution warehouses in other cities, usually within a few hundred miles of the home brewery. These depots sometimes used the same architectural themes as the home brewery. Brewery operators frequently had some control of their saloon customers via lending arrangements. In some cases the brewers built their own saloons, dance halls and beer gardens. The saloons of companies like Pabst used the same architectural themes as the home brewery. Many brewery branded saloons are still standing in the Midwest. The practice of breweries owning or controlling saloons was outlawed when prohibition was repealed. It only recently became legal again for brewers to sell directly to consumers.
Pabst company owned saloon, Racine Wisconsin
Boiler and engine houses were common components of brewery campuses. Steam boilers produced smoke as well as steam so boiler houses can be identified at the bases of smoke stacks. The location of boilers in a brewery plant changed when electric motors were adopted in the 1890s and 1900s. Prior to electric motor driven equipment, all of the pumps, mixers and lifts in a brewery would have been driven by shafts and belts connected directly to a steam engine. This meant placing the boiler and steam engine close together and close to the brewery's equipment advantageous. The location of refrigeration equipment has always been slightly more flexible. The compressor and hot side of a refrigeration system is where mechanical power is required. Compressors, which in the late 1800s were massive positive displacement pumps, could have been placed anywhere where they were easy to connect to a steam engine. Liquid ammonia was pumped from the compressor to evaporators in the areas that needed to be cooled. Once electric motors came into common use, the boiler, steam engine if any, and refrigeration compressor were often placed together in a mechanical building close to the main brewery. Fewer of these survive than other types of brewery buildings. Possibly because their design was so dependent on the technology of the machinery they housed.
Neuweiler Brewery boiler plant (on right), Allentown Pennsylvania
Beer production resumed at the Neuweiler brewery in 1933 and stopped permanently in 1968. The buildings of the brewery complex are abandoned and badly deteriorated.
General purpose storage buildings were frequent components of brewery complexes. Many of them survive and many of them were unremarkable structures. In many cases they are the only surviving structures from their respective breweries. They were often small and easily adapted to other storage uses. Very large breweries sometimes had large specialized storage structures. A medium sized brewery would have stored grains and malted barley in a general-purpose storage building. The largest breweries that purchased raw barley built special grain storage silos.
Lemp brewery grain silos, St. Louis Missouri
The Lemp grain silos in St. Louis Missouri are the only large pre-prohibition brewery silos that still stand, that I'm aware of. They appear to be constructed with glazed brick and use the same Romanesque motifs as the larger brewery. They may be the only silos of their kind in the US regardless of their brewery association. Since the Lemp compound was purchased by a shoe manufacturing company shortly after national prohibition, it may be that the Lemp silos haven't been used for anything in 100 years.
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