Old & Closed Breweries

Come to Milwaukee. Lots of buildings in the old Pabst complex still stand and have been repurposed, and you can get a history tour of the old history center at Best Place.

Schlitz was developed into a business park called Schlitz Park.

Parts of Blatz were developed into apartments.

Here's a good article on them (no guarantee it isn't behind a paywall, I am a subscriber of the paper): https://www.jsonline.com/story/ente...er-schlitz-pabst-blatz-gettelman/69870829007/

 

In Over-The-Rhine (downtown Cincinnati) the former J.G. Sohn, then Clyffsyde, and then Red Top Brewery.



This facility is currently under a MASSIVE restoration to be made into a full production brewery and event space. The current ownership owns the rights to many historic Cincinnati beer brands. I'm VERY excited to see this project brought to life.

Back in the early spring at BockFest, mrs. meanmutt and I got to go on a tour of the inside of the site just days before full on restoration work was scheduled to start...






they didn't save the cupola...

...but they did entirely rebuild the smokestack complete with period correct style logo branding

 

Oh! Now this is really cool. Adaptive reuse AND new life for its original purpose. Please post a when they reopen. Thanks!!

 

Spokane had several breweries, most notably the Schade Brewery. Opened in 1902, and added on to periodically until 1937. After the Schade brand ceased to exist during prohibition, it was reopened upon repeal as Golden Age Brewery, then operated as a brewery by Bohemian Brewing, and then Atlantic Brewing, before becoming an industrial warehouse in 1959.

The building still exists as an office building called Schade Towers in what is now the so-called University District.

 

Btw, the specifics and pics came from Wikipedia.

 

My brother, who lives in Oly, tells me that approximately once a year it's reported in the local media that somebody has come up with a scheme to open the more modern brewery back up. Not being originally from Olympia, he's not terribly nostalgic about the brewery and thinks the citizens of the city need to learn to move on and tear it down.

 

When Atlantic closed the Spokane brewery, the Olde English (OE) label was sold to BlitzWeinhard in Portland. Blitz had success with OE. They brewed the brand for the west, and contracted out production for the rest of the country (including to Heileman and Ortlieb in the 70s). Blitz also acquired regional rights to Bohemian Club ("Boh Belongs"), which was their local bargain brand in the 60s and 70s. The Midwest rights to Boh eventually went to Huber, who retained the more attractive older label design.

 

The “new” brewery isn’t all that architecturally significant, IMO, and looks a bit like a GM plant or the Shotz brewery of “Laverne and Shirley” fame (apparently now the Lakefront brewery?) in Milwaukee.


The old brewery looks like a more interesting structure, the kind of historic building McMenamin’s restores and converts into a restaurant/inn complex—but there’s been a fire and I doubt it would be structurally safe for such an endeavor.

 

Note the hole in the floor, where a brew kettle was removed. These structural anomalies make it harder to convert old breweries to other uses.

 

Back in 1973 on a trip out west in the trusty old Plymouth Valiant we always kept at least a dozen Olympias packed cold. Good easy drinking beer . Driving fluid. We didn't see bats in the desert, but we did see a grizzly at Crater Lake,. and it was too close. I loved Olympia back in those days. There is a lot more to this story. Not to mention the drive from Cheyenne to Indianapolis non-stop....

 

Just a note. You didn't see a grizzly at Crater Lake. The last grizzly in Oregon was seen in 1930 in far Eastern Oregon (near Enterprise). You probably saw a black bear, but misidentification isn't too surprising. Still your bear was threatening (and memorable) enough. For details see:
https://www.dfw.state.or.us/wildlife/living_with/black_bears.asp
Also, I drove my '60 Valiant San Diego to Chicago in '75, and in '77 on to the New York area. It was driven to the scrapyard in '84. So a reliable Chrysler product that devolved into the K-car.

 

This bear was very tall, lumbering and not like a black bear- I thought. It was a shock and we weren't supposed to be camping there. I'm used to black bears and this creature was very healthy and large...

 

Petosky brewing is a cool old building. Built as a brewery in the late 1800s, it's kind of out on the edge of town because that's where the spring is. It's also super tall and skinny because they would take the spring water to the top and the use gravity to move the liquid through the brewing process.

It's a brewery once again and they have lots of historical info in the building. It's a cool place.
https://www.petoskeybrewing.com/history

 

I think it's less attachment to the architecture of the brewery then an attachment to the fact that it was once a major employer in the area. Olympia is really hung up on Olympia beer. The font used on the can labels is used on virtually all city signage, like in the various city parks, and the actual shift change whistle that used to blow at the plant is now attached to City Hall and blows at 5:00 p.m. each evening. Culturally, Olympia really hasn't gotten over no longer being a town featuring a major brewery.

 

That slant 6 engine was a marvel. I changed the spark plugs and oil a lot over, say, maybe 500K miles. That was an awesome Detroit vehicle. I next bought a 1976 Dodge pick up with the same engine and it lasted well for nearly 20 years. It was a great truck used by many of my friends. "Oh, can I borrow your truck?"

 

I guess being the state capital (and thus enjoying the best maintained roads and overall infrastructure in Washington) just isn’t enough for them…