Rising from the Wreckage

A curving portico with majestic columns drew the attention of Bob Sandage as he passed by the crumbling structure east of downtown Atlanta. So did the graffiti-tagged walls, the shattered windows and the homeless seeking shelter under the derelict building’s roof.

Sandage, a longtime homebrewer, saw something in the once-grand mansion—a home for his dream, a brewpub. And today, the basement of the restored Victor H. Kriegshaber House is just that: The Wrecking Bar Brewpub. Above, the home itself, redubbed The Marianna, provides about 3,000 square feet of space for banquets, classical music recitals, class reunions and other special events.

Like many older structures, the building has survived a series of owners. Kriegshaber, an Atlanta community leader, commissioned the house and moved into it in 1900. Naming it after his daughter, Marian, Kriegshaber and his family lived there for a quarter century.

From 1929 to 1940, it served as the Centerary Methodist Protestant Church, and then became the Jack Rand Dance Studio, which operated until 1964. Six years later, Wilma Stone rescued it from certain destruction and opened Wrecking Bar Architectural Antiques, an architectural salvage store where contractors and homeowners could browse for exotic chandeliers, doorknobs, ceiling tiles and such.

The shop closed in 2005, just before the real estate crash, and the investor who bought it next let it fall into decay. A “For Sale” sign attracted no buyers. Then in 2010, three days before selling his communications engineering company, Sandage noticed a new sign: “Bank-Owned.”

Following years of warehousing salvaged building material, it was finally the Kriegshaber House’s turn to be salvaged, and time for Sandage to dust off the brewpub business plan he’d started years before. “The fact that I had just went through the sale of my company, and I had money now … this was a little bigger undertaking than I had planned,” he says, “But it had all that character that I was looking for.”

Sandage made an offer. He contacted Rick Bizot, a local architect with whom he had shared his brewpub dream. Before moving forward however, the distressed property need to be inspected—all 18,000 square feet of it.

Despite the cosmetic damage, Bizot says, “It had good bones. It looked solid.”

Sandage made the leap. Then came the renovation. Fortunately, Bizot says, Sandage’s vision meshed with reality. “It can be hard to look at an old building and see possibilities, and sometimes owners want to do things that are not so easily accomplished,” adds the architect. “But in this case, it was a wonderful alignment of what Bob wanted to do with the building, and what the building wanted to offer.”

First, he tucked a 7-barrel brewhouse and four 7-barrel fermenters into a space at the back. The brewpub took shape in the basement among thick granite pillars, while the upper floor transformed into the events center, restored as accurately as possible to its original late Victorian look.

The Wrecking Bar sits on the border of two well-known Atlanta districts: Historic Inman Park, populated by homes of the same vintage and touted as “Atlanta’s first suburb,” and Little Five Points, a Bohemian business district that has been described as the Haight-Ashbury of Atlanta.

“Its clientele seems to pull from both sides, and I imagine being walking distance for thousands of people is pretty helpful for business,” says Austin L. Ray, a local beer writer and frequent contributor to BeerAdvocate.

The transformation did not go unnoticed. In 2012, The Wrecking Bar received an Atlanta Urban Design Commission Award and a similar honor from The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation.

Earlier this year, larger fermenters were installed as limited off-premise distribution has introduced the brewpub to a wider audience. “People come in and say, ‘Hey, I had a couple of your beers at another bar and want to try others,’” Sandage says. “It works out well.” ■