A History of Milwaukee and Wisconsin Breweries
Compiled and Edited by Michael R. Reilly, copyright 1996
Last Revised 08/16/2015
The Middle Europeans brought with them a taste for beer, a beverage which had not been much admired in Milwaukee before their arrival. A combination brewery and distillery, the “Milwaukee brewery”, had been established by Welshmen Richard G. Owens, William Pawlett and John Davis at the foot of Huron (Clybourne) Street in 1840.
From the Milwaukee Sentinel November 29, 1869:
“The first brewery in this city was erected on thesouth side of the foot of Huron St. in the spring of 1840 by Messrs. Owens,Pawlett and Davis, natives of Wales. It formed the nucleus of what is now knownas the “Lake Brewery”. It was a small frame building which untilwithin a few years stood on the original site in the rear of the presentdilapidated structure. For upward of two years this small establishmentfurnished a sufficient quantity of ale and beer to quench the thirst of alllovers of malt liquor in Eastern Wisconsin. In 1845 the proprietors were obligedto enlarge the premises and during the past year a large brick addition has beenbuilt. Richard Owens, Esq., one of the original owners is now sole proprietor,the lesser being Messrs. Powell & Co.
Shortly after the establishment of the Lake Brewery,several others were built, one, the Eagle Brewery* under the hill south ofChestnut St. by Levi Blossom, Esq., and another in the same neighborhood by thelate General Phillip Best.
*Editor’s note – According to another source, this ale brewery was originally started by Frederick Miller and William Pawlett in 1843 and taken over by Levi Blossom.
J. P. B. McCabe’s 1847 directory told of Blossom’s having”10 acres on a hill commanding a view of the whole city, bay andriver”, and declared that Blossom planned “to ornament the groundswith a handsome public garden and vineyard, fountains and jets to add to thenatural beauty.” This is the first mention of a beer garden in earlyMilwaukee chronicles, although several such places seem to have been started inthe 1840’s.
Blossom soon sold thebrewery, and under the management of Henry Sands it became widely known for itsrich “pale cream ale.”
The first Milwaukee brewery had as a brew kettle anordinary wooden box lined with sheet copper, capacity, five barrels. Owens, aformer maker of millstones in Cleveland, OH; Buffalo, N.Y., and St. Louis, MO.had to go to Michigan City, IN to find enough barley – 130 bushels – to starthis brewery; shipping it here on the sloop, the Ranger.
The first brew – ale- not beer – was pronounced a greatsuccess, and the elated Owens drove a team through snowdrifts to Chicago inJanuary 1841 to get a bigger brew kettle. It was a great day for Milwaukeebrewing when he brought back a 12 barrel copper kettle, more than tripling thebrewery’s capacity. In 1844, a still larger kettle was manufactured inMilwaukee, and the city’s first brewery , renamed the Lake brewery todistinguish it from others that had started – attained the startling capacity of40 barrels. Owens bought out his partners and continued in business until 1864,when M.W. Powell of Chicago bought it. It continued as the Powell brewery untilit closed in 1880.
In those days before mechanical refrigeration or areliable ice supply, breweries invariably had stone or brick lined vaults dugdeep into the cool earth. The oxen or horse drawn wagons that delivered the brewcould often be seen backed up to the door of one of these hillside vaults, beingpiled high with the cave chilled kegs.
But the beer did not really catch on until the Germansstarted making it themselves. By 1850, when Milwaukee’s population was 20,061,exactly 9,902 fewer than Chicago’s that year, the Wisconsin city had a dozenbreweries, nearly all of them operated by Germans. Before long, it also had 255saloons, along with 47 churches and six temperance societies.
In only one year in Milwaukee history – 1889 – was brewingthe major industry here. Yet even today, the name Milwaukee suggests to mostAmericans, an odor of malt and hops, and raises a picture of rotund and jollyGerman burghers clinking steins and dipping their mustaches in creamy foam.
The man whose good living has produced a certain swellingat the belt line is said to have a “Milwaukee Goiter”, and there is awidespread superstition that three faucets were installed in every Milwaukeesink: one for hot water, one for cold water, and the biggest one for beer.
We know that these legends are a trifle exaggerated, butthere was some real basis for associating Milwaukee with beer. The city rankedsecond to New York in 1946 as a beer producing center, moving to first place inthe 1950’s when Schlitz became the number one brewer. Even more significant in1945 was that Milwaukee County residents themselves drank more than 10% of the7,000,000 barrel output that year, or about a barrel per person per year. In1889 when beer was the city’s leading product, about 1,800,000 barrels werebrewed, a barrel being 31 gallons.
There is also some basis for linking beer with the Germanshere and Gemuetlichkeit – their concept of good fellowship. It was not theGermans, but Welshmen, who started the first brewery here in 1840, but Germanbrewers soon assumed a dominant position in the industry, and they wereresponsible for the Biergarten, the brewery parks, and the annual picnics,concerts, and Saengerfests at which beer drinking and Gemuetlichkeit wereinseparably linked.
This is not to say that Germans were drunkards. On thecontrary, the beer which the Germans preferred was a “temperancedrink” by comparison with the 15 cent a gallon whiskey the”Yankee” and other early settlers consumed in immoderate quantities.
The German institutionof “Dutch Treat”, each man ordering and paying for his own drink, alsotended toward moderation, as it left the amount consumed more within theindividual’s discretion than did the “treating” system which theYankees considered more gentlemanly and liberal.
The adoption of beer as a substitute for whiskeyaccomplished more in diminishing drunkenness in the young and fun loving city,it is safe to say, than more drastic early temperance measures, like the”noble experiment” of Caleb Wall in 1842.
The reformist Mr. Wall had come into possession ofJuneau’s old Bellevue House, later the Milwaukee House, at the corner ofWisconsin and Main Streets. Now East Wisconsin and Broadway.
Wall started the citizenry one day by announcing thathenceforth his hostelry would be conducted as a temperance hotel. He posted alist of rules for the conduct of his guests: they were to remain decorouslysober, and to retire nightly by 10 p.m., at which hour the doors would belocked.
However his patrons were the victims of old habit, anddespite the best intentions, 10 p.m. seldom found them tucked obediently intotheir beds. In the half light of dawn, shadowy figures were often seen shinnyingup ropes or knotted bedding into the back windows of the establishment.
One night the well intentioned Mr. Wall was awakened inthe wee hours by a grating noise at the rear of the hotel. Rushing out the backdoor in his nightcap and gown, he found fully half his boarders, with as muchcaution as their tipsy condition would allow, raising a ladder against an upperwindow to reach their rooms.
Disappointed in the frailty of his fellowmen, but with ashrewd regard for the welfare of his business, Wall set a later closing hour.The new rule was no better kept than the old, so Wall renounced reformaltogether, and installed the most lavishly stocked bar in town.
The first temperanceexperiment was floated away in a river of choice spirits, and Bellevue becameone of the most notorious roistering places in the Midwest. Wall’s consciencesoon drove him out of hotel keeping into auctioneering and real estate.
The second brewery in the city, and the first one to brewlager beer, was appropriately started by a German, Hermann Reuthlisberger (Reutelshofer), in thespring of 1841. This plant was at Walker’s Point, at the corner of Hanover andVirginia Streets (S. 3rd and W. Virginia). Reuthlisberger’s beer proved verypopular, but he was without capital enough to operate, and soon sold his littleplant to John B. Meyer, a baker.
In 1844 Meyer sold out to his father-in-law, FrancisNeukirch, who carried on the business under the Neukirch name. In 1848 Neukirchtook into partnership another son-in-law, Charles T. Melms, and the plant wasmoved to old 1st Ave. (S. 6th St.), end of the 6th St. bridge.
In 1859 Melms took over the company. He lived in lavishstyle in a showy mansion, and was one of the city’s first “beerbarons”. He converted the brewery grounds to a very popular beer garden.When he died in 1869, from lockjaw – said to have come from sitting on a needle,he had the most elaborate funeral the city had seen to that day.
The first brewery destined to survive into a period whenbeer was Milwaukee’s best known product was begun by the German family namedBest. Jacob Best, Jr. and a brother, Charles, arrived in Milwaukee in 1842 andopened a vinegar works. Two years later they were joined by two other brothers,Phillip and Lorenz. and their father, Jacob, Sr., who had been a brewer inMettenheim. The family bought a site on the Chestnut Street hill. Phillip Bestcontracted with an iron monger, A.J. Langworthy, to build a boiler for the newbrewery.
No one had ever built a boiler in Milwaukee before (had tohave been made prior to Owens kettle in 1844), but Langworthy and a workmanhammered
one together, sitting on the bankof a canal Byron Kilbourn had started in the vain hope of linking Milwaukee withthe Mississippi River. When the boiler was finished, Phillip Best walked downthe hill with his entire fortune tied in a red handkerchief.
He gave the money to Langworthy as a down payment, tellingthe iron monger he’d be back to pick up the boiler when he’d sold enough vinegarto pay the rest of the bill. But Langworthy wasn’t a man to stand in the way ofprogress.
“Take the boiler,” he said. “Get to work.Pay as soon as you can.” Best was astonished. These Americans had anunbusiness-like way of conducting their affairs. But he was grateful. He promisedLangworthy that the first keg of beer would go to him, adding, “And youshall have free beer as long as you live.” “There is a saying inMilwaukee: “We can make it faster than you can drink it.” Langworthylived until he was past eighty, but he never went thirsty.
The Best family enterprise did not concentrate on lager atfirst. Whiskey sold in saloons for two cents a shot, so beer was not the firstchoice of the dedicated drinking man. The Empire Brewery turned out rye,bourbon, porter, and ale as well as beer. But as the west side began filling upwith Germans, the market improved for malt beverages, and the distilling branchof the operation was abandoned. The Bests at first did all of the workthemselves, even to the making of barrels.
Sale of Best’s beer was promoted by a political feudduring the debate on a state constitution in the late forties. The firstproposed constitution contained a liberal provision on suffrage, for the city’sforeign born. Mr. Francis Neukirch took a stand against the proposedconstitution, possibly on account of a clause in it prohibiting banking. TheBests made it known that they favored the constitution, with the result that amovement was started among the foreign born here to boycott the “anticonstitution” Neukirch beer and drink only the “pro constitution”Best beer.
Tavern keepersshrewdly avoided bring ground between the two factions by announcing that theycould serve either Best’s or Neukirch’s. So the “pros” would line upon one end of the bar, taunting their opponents by toasting “Prosit,Best!” The “antis” countered by shouting “Prosit, Neukirch!”The factions never suspected that all their beer was drawn from the same keg.
Charles Best left the family enterprise in 1848 to start abrewery of his own, the “Plank Road Brewery”, later selling it toFrederick Miller in 1856, who had brought $10,000 in gold with him from Wurtemburg. As Miller’s, the brewery is still going strong.
Photo – MilwaukeeCounty Historical Society—–>
As for the Empire Brewery, begun by the Best family in1844, it went through several name changes. It was called Phillip Best BrewingCo. after Phillip took control from his father and brothers in 1860. When hedied, leadership passed to a son-in-law, Fred Pabst, a former skipper (and aone-time cabin boy for the Eber Brock Ward) of a GreatLakes boat.
<—Photo of Best brewery circa 1859, Milwaukee CountyHistorical Society.
Pabst had migrated from Germany at age twelve, working hisway from cook’s assistant and cabin boy to the captaincy of one of the lakevessels of the Goodrich Line. In 1864, at age 28, he became a partner withPhillip Best after marrying his daughter some years earlier. In 1866 he becameresponsible for the management of the brewery with another of Best’sson-in-laws, Emil Schandein.
The company absorbed a number of smaller breweries andbecame the first exporter of Milwaukee beer. In 1869 (1970) the firm bought the Melmsbrewery (once Milwaukee’s leading brewery), which became the south side branch of Best’s.Five years later he built his company’s first bottling plant on the site. The captain built theenterprise into what was claimed to be the largest brewery in the world for atime, and renamed it in his honor.
One of the turning points in Milwaukee brewing came in thefall of 1871 when much of Chicago burned down, including most of that city’sbreweries. Best, Miller, Schlitz, Blatz, and several smaller rivals made surethat no one in Illinois had to go thirsty.
By 1872, half ofMilwaukee’s beer was sold out of town. The city’s population then was only75,000, but it shipped more beer than New York, Philadelphia, or St. Louis. Withthe newly opened market 90 miles to the south, production soared.
Best’s, the leading Milwaukee brewery, had produced lessthan 24,000 barrels in 1869, five years later, it was turning out 100,000barrels – more than any other American brewery. Within twenty-five years itreached the million barrel mark.
As business extended itself beyond the state of Wisconsin,the partners , to relieve themselves of individual responsibility, incorporatedthe business as the Phillip Best Brewing Company in 1873, with a capitalizationof $300,000. This stood at $4,000,000 by the close of the 1880’s and by 1892, itwas $10,000,000. In 1889 the firm adopted the slogan, “He drinks BEST whodrinks PABST”.
The company made tremendous strides from 1873 to 1893,producing one million barrels that year, making it the number one brewery inAmerica.
Following the death of Schandein, the company name changedto Pabst in 1899.
Milwaukee made morebeer and its residents drank more of it per capita than any other Americans formany years to come. But with all of the brewing in the city, it only rankednumber one among the city’s industries during one year, 1890.
Another immigrant, August Krug, started a brewery in 1849as an offshoot of the small restaurant he ran near Fifth and Chestnut. This wasthe embryo of what was to be the city’s largest brewery.
A couple of years after he died in 1856, his widow, AnnaMarie Krug, married the bookkeeper, Joseph Schlitz, who later renamed thebrewery. Control reverted to Krug’s nephewsin 1875, headed by August Uihlein, after Schlitz perished in a shipwreck on May7th.
According to legend,the will stipulated that the name could not be changed but according to thiseditor, after examining a copy of the will, can state that no provision of thesort existed. If one where to think about it, it would only make good businesssense to keep a company name that was prospering. It remained Schlitz until itwas sold in the 1980’s.
The name of Uihlein figured prominently in the evolutionof the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, which was organized with acapitalization of $200,000 in 1874. AugustUihlein, born of a family of Bavarian brewers, had come to America at the age ofnine, received his education at the Engelmann’s German English School, and foundearly employment in the brewery of his uncle Krug.
After Schlitz’s death, Henry Uihlein became president,Alfred, the brew master, but August, owning the majority of the stock, ruled bycommon consent under the unassuming title of “Secretary andTreasurer”.
As in the case of Pabst’s widely ramified enterprises, thefinancial foundations of the Schlitz Company were doubly secured by investmentsin real estate, banking, and insurance corporations.
In 1902 the output of the Schlitz Brewing Companysurpassed that of Pabst, a supremacy it maintained until the Prohibition era.The company was capitalized at $12,000,000 in 1903.
What eventually became the Blatz brewery was founded in1846 by John Braun at Main and Division Streets (N. Broadway and E. JuneauAve.). After Braun died his Bavarian braumeister, Valentin Blatz, marriedthelate boss’ widow and took over the business. In 1875 he contracted to have partof the brewery’s output bottled, and soon 2,000 bottles a day – the first beerbottles in Milwaukee – were being turned out. The next year the Blatz bottledproduct took the top award at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.
The Blatz brewing interests were incorporated in 1889 asthe Val Blatz Brewing Company with a capitalization of $2,000,000. In1891, Valentin Blatz sold out to a group of London financiers known in brewingcircles as “the English Syndicate”.
On the death of Frederic Miller in 1888, responsibilityfor his brewery, then having a capacity of 80,000 barrels a year, fell into hissons, Ernest and Fred, who reorganized it, put up new buildings, and increasedthe output.
The Gettelman Company took shape in 1877, when AdamGettelman applied his name to the brewery founded in 1854, which his wife hadinherited. Adam had taken over management in 1870.
Originally the Menomonee brewery built in 1854 by Messrs.Strohn and Reitzenstein, at W. State and N. 44th Street, it was passed on to George Schweichardt when the two gentlemen died of cholera later in that year.it was said that Mr. Schweichardt purchased the unfinished plant “for asong”.
Gettelman had a standing challenge, offering $1,000 toanyone who could discover adulterants in his beer – hence the trade name,”$1,000 Beer”
Part of the progress of the industry is to be explained byinnovations in method which the brewers were quick to institute. Milwaukee’sbrewers were professionals, many of them schooled in the European traditions ofthe trade. In 1883, William J. Uihlein, assistant superintendent of the SchlitzCompany, brought the first culture apparatus from Denmark to the United States.
By the seventies, the larger companies were expandingphysical facilities; building great elevators – to which the barley was carriedby wagon; huge tanks – where the grain was soaked preparatory to sprouting onthe malting floor; refrigeration plants, first installed by Pabst in 1878, whichcooled the brew once the wort had been boiled with hops; and the cavernousunderground vats for storing the liquor until it became lager beer.
Improved bottling facilities were installed in the laterseventies to accommodate the new method of marketing the brew. At Schlitz, acrude bottle-washing apparatus was operated by young women, after which the beerwas pumped from kegs and the bottles corked, wired, labeled, and packed inbarrels preparatory to horse-drawn delivery.
The Pabst plant began to bottle beer in 1875; by the earlyeighties the bows of blue ribbon then being attached by hand to the bottles ofits “Select beer were setting the precedent which led to the adoption ofthe “Blue Ribbon” trade mark in the later nineties. In 1890, when thecapacity of the Pabst plant had reached 700,000 barrels, Captain Pabst built”the largest bottling plant in the country with “the first undergroundbeer pipe line from the cellars to the bottling house.”
The same year saw the Miller Company installing electriclights. By the middle eighties, the plants were becoming increasingly consciousof the bearing of scientific knowledge on the brewing staff. Trained chemistswere attached to their staffs; and innovations such as the Schlitz brown bottleresulted from their scientific study of such problems as the effect of light onbeer.
But annual sales of Milwaukee beer could not haveincreased from 108,842 barrels in 1870 to 1,809,066 barrels twenty years laterhad it not been for the zeal with which its promoters widened the market for itsproduct and the ingenuity with which they advertised it.
Promotion was the key note of Pabst’s great period ofexpansion from 1873 to 1893; and by the close of the period, the company wasexpanding as much as $69,000 annually on this newly developing marketingtechnique.
Determining to capture the urban market for his “BlueRibbon” product and identify it with the people and places of taste,Captain Pabst established fashionable outlets for the exclusive sale of his brewnot only in Milwaukee, but in Chicago, San Francisco, Minneapolis, andespecially New York.
Here he establishedthe Pabst Hotel, a hostelry for bachelors at Times Square, a restaurant andtheater at Columbus Circle, a pavilion called Pabst’s Loop at Coney Island, andwhat was at its opening in 1900, the largest restaurant in America, the PabstHarlem, located near Eighth Avenue at 125th.
He employed matinee idols to visit bars, buy food for”the house”, and drink to the health of Captain Pabst,””Milwaukee’s greatest beer brewer.” At his instigation, signs ,plastered on dead walls and wagon tops or hung from street cars, fore and aft,proclaimed, “Milwaukee beer is famous – Pabst has made it so.” Bycurious coincidence or promotional ingenuity, Admiral Perry found a Pabst bottlenear the North Pole.
Schlitz advertising men were equally resourceful. A rewardof 3,600 bottles of Schlitz to Admiral Dewey and his men for the capture ofManila led to an order of sixty-seven carloads of the brew for the Philippines.
Schlitz beer went to Africa with Theodore Roosevelt; ninebottles found in the stomach of a dead whale. From Europe to the Orient,advertising tricks and by-words caused the product to be known. it was perhapsonly by inadvertence that two such slogans served to publicize Milwaukee, too;but the result was such as to make the association of the product with the citytraditional. “The Beer that Made Milwaukee Famous” -the particularlyeffective advertising line which the Schlitz Company purchased for $5,000 from asmaller brewing concern, *Blatz, became the subject of a controversy betweenSchlitz and Pabst advertising men in 1898. As a result, the Pabst Companyultimately relinquished their original slogan (“Milwaukee Beer Is Famous- Pabst Has Made It So”) because of its similarity to themore famous one to which Schlitz had a prior claim.
*(It’s interesting to note that in 1986 when the HeilemanBrewing Company was unveiling its new automated Val Blatz plant in Milwaukee,that then CEO Russell Cleary made a statement that Heileman had uncovered somedocumentation that supported the sale of the slogan from Blatz to Schlitz.Mr. Cleary also mentioned that he would purchasethe slogan back from Stroh Brewing Company, the current owners of Schlitz, ifthey had no intention of using it.)
When the slogan was first publicized nation-wide, abrewery in Menomonee, MI. countered with “The Beer that made MilwaukeeJealous”, and a western brewery with “The beer that made MilwaukeeFurious.”
Editor’s note – one or more Wisconsinbreweries also took exception to Schlitz’s slogan and promoted similar offendingones, sometimes ending up with the Schlitz brewery taking them to court.
At the outset of the generation – in about 1911, theSchlitz brewery embarked upon a modern advertising campaign reminiscent ofCaptain Pabst’s efforts to sell his product in the nineties. Thepost-prohibition period saw even more intensive efforts in this direction. Earlyin February 1937, Schlitz began a campaign of full-color advertising in thirteenlarge magazines, designed to reach four out of every five homes in the UnitedStates. Publicity appeared in 500 city newspapers during the summer,twenty-four-sheet bill postings were displayed in 500 cities, and the SchlitzPalm Garden of the Air carried the message to the nation’s radio listeners. Asimilarly extensive advertising campaign acquainted the American public with themerits of the “Blue Ribbon” product; and the Pabst network of salesorganization covered the country.
Functional construction characterized the $2,000,000addition to the Schlitz Company’s brewery, which was opened in 1937. Thedevelopment of new and intricate machinery in the post-prohibition erarevolutionized the style of brewing. Glass-lined, steel storage tanks replacedthe copper kettles and wooden tanks of the nineteenth century. Scientificallydiffused light and new style automatic germinating drums improved the maltingprocess. Monster grain dryers and 400 ton ice machines dwarfed earlier apparatusof this type; and new mechanical casing equipment made it possibleto insert twenty-four bottles into cardboard cases without resorting to manuallabor. Comprehensive conveyor systems, in this as in other mechanicalindustries, symbolized the substitution of mechanical for human power; andoutside the breweries, motor tractors replaced the rumbling, horse-drawn wagonsof earlier day.
The brewing industry, also better than any other of thecity’s manufacturers, exhibited the extent to which the industrial revolution ofmetro Milwaukee was conditioned by changes in law and popular practice duringthe period 1910 to 1940. Despite its association with the Gemuetlichkeit of theWisconsin city, beer more than the other major items of production, wasvulnerable to attack on social grounds. This was increasingly apparent duringthe reform-minded “progressive era”; and as early a 1916 some of thecity’s promoter were at pains to point out that in one census year – that of1889 – had brewing constituted Milwaukee’s largest industry, and that “in1915 not more than one-twentieth of all goods produced …was beer.” Asstate after state “went dry” in 1916, the Wisconsin Brewers’Association became sufficiently alarmed to propose cleaning up the saloonbusiness in the city as a means of quieting criticisms by the Anti-saloonLeague; but more than the forces of reform was spelling the industry’s momentarydoom.
World War I presented a more essential need for the grainfrom which the beverage was made; and when it was disclosed that such Germanbrewers as Joseph Uihlein, Gustave Pabst, and members of the Miller family hadsupported Arthur Brisbane’s purchase of the Washington Times, as a means offighting Prohibition, the industry was accused of subsidizing German propagandaand obstructing the nation’s war effort. The brewers’ allegedly disloyalbehavior was the subject of a Senate investigation ordered in September 1918,and a month later, President Wilson signed a bill prohibiting the manufacture ofintoxicating beverages after May 1, 1919, and their sale after the first of thefollowing July.
This reform-fostered and war-invoked legislation dealt thebrewers a drastic blow. By 1912 – less than fifty years after the industry hadreported an annual output of 69,000 barrels – production had been boosted to4,182,000. By 1918 the total had declined to 2,217,000 barrels; but the productstill represented a value of $35,000,000 and jobs not only for approximately6,000 brewery workers but also for the employees of the city’s some 1,900saloons. Russell Austin’s “The Milwaukee Story” describes the funeralof John Barleycorn, held in the city shortly before the day when liquor saleswere scheduled to close.
On June 21, 1919…twenty-some sad faced Milwaukeeans…gathered at the…Weis liquor dispensary…to hold a funeral. In a back roomoverlooking the Milwaukee River, a specially made coffin containing the “earthly remains of Mr. John Barleycorn” rested upon a bier lighted bybourbon bottle candelabra. Floral tributes were tastefully arranged in beer mugsaround the casket…The pallbearers bore the weighted casket to the river,dropped it in, and tossed after it numerous empty bottles and the firm’s cashregister for good measure.
Equally indicative of Milwaukee’s sentiments was thecomment of August Kahlo, retiring saloonkeeper, who posted a placard reading,”The First of July Is the Last of August”. National prohibition,arriving on January 16, 1920, was greeted in Milwaukee without ceremony orcelebration; and only six citizens took leave of liquor so violently as torequire the attentions of the police. By 1921 the value of beverages produced inthe city had dropped from $35,000,000, the 1918 figure, to less than $2,600,000;and by the close of the twenties the number of employees stood at 512 ascompared to 3,217 in 1910.
Many Milwaukeeans found their adjustment to prohibition inthe bootlegger, the “speak-easy”, and home brew. But the formerproducers turned to the manufacture of such legally acceptable commodities ascheese, malt, candy, chewing gum, and near beer.
The Miller breweryturned out a cereal beverage bearing the “High Life” label; and allleading breweries produced millions of pounds of malt syrup yearly. A Schlitzadvertisement in 1928 contrasts strangely with earlier and more succinctpublicity for the contents of the “brown bottle”:”Schlitz-Flavored Malt Syrup. The name Schlitz on the label gives you thesame absolute assurance of purity and confidence in malt syrup as the name”Sterling”…on silver. For Better Bread and FinerCandy-Schlitz-Milwaukee.”
The re legalization of beer – on April 7, 1933 – broughtthe promise of prosperity regained. Fifty thousand spectators milled around thebreweries on the eve of the new day; and when 12:01 a.m. arrived, there wasdancing in the streets, factory and tugboat whistles blew, and an AmericanLegion band at the Schlitz brewery blared out, “Happy Days Are HereAgain.” The city’s breweries, with plans for expansion already under way,had 15,000,000 bottles of beer ready for shipment across the nation, as thesignal struck; and by the end of the year, sales had mounted to $30,000,000;nearly $10,000,000 had been spent in reconditioning plants, and more than 8,000workers had been returned to brewery and allied pay rolls.
Production mounted as the Thirties progressed. In June1936, Pabst reported the best month in its history; and Schlitz, Blatz, andMiller were making shipments of unprecedented size. In 1936 and 1937, the majorbreweries undertook costly plant expansion, until 1940 the total value ofbrewery property in the city approached $20,000,000. By that date, theircomeback had restored the industry to a position on the “Big Ten”list; and the output of the city’s nine brewing establishments, valued at nearly$40,000,000, exceeded by 10 percent the value of production in pre-prohibitiondays.
In 1946 Pabst was one of the leading breweries of theworld, occupying five city blocks, with offices at 917 W. Juneau Ave. Capt.Pabst’s big sandstone and brick mansion at the present 2000 W. Wisconsin Ave. istoday (1946) the Catholic archbishop’s homeand the seat of the Milwaukee archdiocese.
References: Milwaukee Sentinel, November 29,1869 (Beth Hille); “It Started in Milwaukee” from the book Yesterday’sMilwaukee by Robert W. Wells; “The Beer Barons”, orig.published in 1877 and obtained from the Local History Dept. of the MilwaukeePublic Library. Russell Austin’s The Milwaukee Story from 1946.
Additional Information-Pabst Brewery
This information was originally printed in the“Industrial History of Milwaukee – 1886”. Thanks to former MABCmember Ken Obermann, much of it was reprinted years ago in The Cream CityCourier. As Ken wrote, “these may tend to be a little wordy, and somefacts may be distorted, or omitted. Remember, however, that these biographieswere written while their subjects were living.” To that I add, if anyonehas additional information or corrections to this material, this editor wouldgladly receive it.
For the benefit of visitors to our city, and informationto the readers of this work, we give an account of the location and descriptionof the mammoth buildings of this company.
Their plant, or main buildings and beautiful generaloffices, are situated on both sides of Chestnut St. from 9th to 11th. They arelocated on six different blocks, and the life and action in these quarters isequal to that of a small city, yet everything is done with a precision anddispatch that is truly wonderful.
The monster structure of this establishment is the EmpireBrewery, consisting of six large buildings, from the top of any one of which canbe obtained a commanding view of the entire city, the surrounding country andLake Michigan. These buildings are well fitted with all modern improvements andmachinery of the latest patterns. The capacity of these buildings alone is over400,000 barrels per year.
The yards, fire-engine house and “pitchingdepartment”, with their full force of well-disciplined firemen, constitutedone of the interesting features.
One of the largest buildings in the world, of this kind,is the extensive malt house. It is ten stories high, and has the best and mostperfect arrangements for malting in the world.
Just east of this large malt house is the company’selevator “A”, which has a storage capacity of 300,000 bushels.
The general offices are next to elevator “A”.They are beautifully decorated and fitted up in the most perfect manner. Thebusiness is all transacted here by a great number of clerks, bookkeepers, etc.The elegant private offices of President Pabst and of Secretary Best are alsosituated in this building.
The extensive stables are situated on the corner ofChestnut and 11th streets. Other interesting features are the engine-room,ice-machine and plant of electric lights, and elegant residence of Capt. Fred.Pabst, with its fine grounds adjoining.
Then there is the South Side Brewery, with a capacity of100,000 barrels per year, and the bottling department, where over 200 handsbottle nearly 15,000,000 bottles of beer per annum, where railroad and lakefacilities for shipping are not equaled by any other establishment in America.
Near here is also the large malt house, elevator”D”, and Vice-President Schandein’s beautiful residence and grounds,on the bluff near the brewery. There are also two large and commodious shippingdepots, one connected with the Chicago & Northwestern, and the other withthe Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway.
The business of this company, from a small beginning, hasreached enormous sales of nearly 500,000 barrels annually. The companymanufactures different varieties of beer, to satisfy the various tastes of theirpatrons. Each variety is marked by a peculiar characteristic, and made of thepurest materials and by the best processes known to science. These varieties areknown as the “EXPORT”, “SELECT”, “BOHEMIAN”,”BAVARIAN”, and “STANDARD”. They are shipped in bulk to allparts of the United States and Mexico, and in bottles all over the civilizedworld.
This company secured the gold medal at both the CentennialExposition at Philadelphia, in 1876, and atthe great World’s Fair at Paris, in 1878. The company’s exhibit also took thefirst prize at the famous Southern Exposition at Atlanta, and at the World’sCotton Centennial Exposition in 1885.
The monster strides of this company’s business can bereadily seen from the simple statement that the production increased from 3,677barrels in 1863, to 385,049 in 1884. The capital invested is $3,387,825; numberof employees, 643; wages paid per year is $385,523,22; number of horses, 207;taxes paid in 1883, $30,246.18; revenue taxes, after deducting 7-1/2 % rebate,$348,150.50; beside other expenses for the year 1883, $3,042,551.28. The companyhas branch offices and wholesale houses in nearly every important city in theUnion.
Other Reference Sources: AmericanBreweries II by Dale P. Van Wieren; The Register of United StatesBreweries 1876-1976, Vol. I & II, by Manfred Friedrich & DonaldBull; The Pabst Brewing Company – The History of an American Brewer byThomas C. Cochran; Breweries of Wisconsin by Jerry Apps; BadgerBreweries: Past & Present by Wayne L. Kroll.