William J. Lemp had completed the two most important buildings of his brewery, the brew house and malt house, but the next task was to create a grand, public face for his institution along Second Carondelet Avenue and Cherokee Street. While the 1866 brew house was functional, it lacked the panache established by the malt house, itself establishing a new architectural vocabulary for the Lemp Brewery. Additionally, as his business grew, Lemp would need more office space and steam power, finishing off his compact campus with expansions that addressed those needs by 1875. In fact, what is perhaps notable of the brewery standing on Cherokee Street in Compton and Dry revolves around its unified composition; while other breweries added on haphazardly in that era, the Lemp Brewery looked like it been built with an overall master plan, most likely devised by Edmund Jungenfeld.
Building a portrait of Lemp’s long-gone Cherokee brew house
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Before discussing these buildings, a quick note must be made about chronology. As established two weeks ago, the original brew house was constructed between 1864-1866, and “then were added in quick succession the malt house, which is one of the finest in the United States, then the offices, and lastly the east front of the brewery and ice house, the whole establishment covering just one block of ground.”1 But sources also tell us that the malt house was completed in 1874, meaning that the rest of the original physical plant was completed in one year, just in time to be depicted in the 1875 Compton and Dry? The author is suspicious that the official timeline may be inaccurate, though it is certainly possible that Lemp’s capital was so flush that the remaining buildings really were built in “quick succession” from 1874-1875.
The Lemp Malt House was built to be functional—and beautiful
Regardless, the newly built office building along Cherokee Street certainly provided an able public front for the brewery along the increasingly traveled east-west thoroughfare. There is a bit of confusion, as a source from 1878 describes the offices “in the principal building” which surely describes the brew house, as “handsomely finished in black walnut.”2 However, in 1874, four years earlier, an official brewery advertisement places the offices of the Western Brewery as being at Second Carondelet Avenue and Cherokee Street.3 A newspaper article would describe the new offices, complete with its own bank vault and telegraph office, as “built of heavy stone and brick, and embellished with the most graceful and ornamental architecture. The floor is of tessellated marble and the rooms are furnished in an elegant and convenient manner…Mr. Lemp’s private office is in the rear where he can always be found early in the morning, giving his personal attention to the details of his enormous business and correspondence.”4
Exploring the unseen corners—and hidden history—of the Lemp Brewery Complex
A Lemp souvenir book from the 1890s illustrates the offices as well, which by this time had received a complete second floor. A photograph shows the original office building and east front of the brew house only a couple of years before the former was demolished for the new stock house in 1911;5 it was at this time the Lemps moved their offices to the Feickert-Lemp Mansion up the street, building new bank vaults to replace the old ones on Cherokee Street.6
The brew house extension, which came next after the office wing, gave the brewery an august appearance along the busy Second Carondelet Avenue façade, being completed sometime around 1874, as mentioned above, and not later in 1885 when the new brew house was constructed.7 This new east wing of the brew house continued the new architectural vocabulary of the malt house and offices, and while obviously built to add more space for brewing operations, it was certainly built to give a more refined appearance of the more rustic 1866 vernacular brew house. What is exciting about the brew house extension is that the building remains largely extant, though covered up by later additions.
The three-story building boasted the Renaissance Revival Rundbogenstil typical of the period, and must have featured a formal front door in the middle of the five-bay Second Carondelet façade (that doorway is no longer extant). The first floor featured a saloon, which was surely open to the public, but a newspaper article also grandiloquently reveals it was “where the delicious amber liquid is dispensed to the employees without consideration—as free and invigorating as the stream from Horeb’s rock.”8
And is so common in an era when brewers were already fearing Prohibition, the article carefully reminds the reader, that “this room constitutes an effective temperance lecture; the men having perfect liberty in the premises, drink beer more lavishly than the laborers in other establishments drink water, and yet there is no such thing as even a slightly intoxicated man about the institution, and the workmen are the very embodiments of health and good humor.”9
In addition to providing Old Testament levels of beer, the brew house extension provided a dormitory and marble wash basins, as well as wardrobes for Lemp employees. The employee accommodations probably grew out of two needs: the brewery’s relative isolation from the central city, and the arrival of young bachelors from Germany needing a place to stay. It was also “scrupulously clean” out of respect for the brewery’s employees.10 There was also a lunchroom in the building as well.11
Perhaps the third floor the brew house extension contained the most fascinating space in the entire brewery. While brewers to this day now advertise the production of beer in a sealed, isolated system, never exposing the beer to air until the bottle is opened, the situation in the 1870s was much different. Spreading out before a visitor, there would be two giant cast iron pans, totally 10,000 square feet, where the heated beer would pour out after having been cooked in the brew kettle. The greater numerical fenestration of windows on the third floor allowed for the free movement of air throughout the space, before the beer was racked off to the cellars, passing over copper coolers.12 It almost seems to strange to be true, giant pans full of “amber liquid” just sitting out for several hours. The giant trusses, mentioned in an article from 1877, still exist, providing the wide-open space required for the cooling pans.13 Visiting the third floor, one can still see the trusses, though they have received iron column supports. While engulfed by later stock houses, the brew house extension’s outer walls can be glimpsed in several places, such as in the new stock house from 1911.
That stock house, in addition to destroying the original office building, also eliminated the first power plant for the Lemp Brewery. But this was no normal power plant; it was located 20 feet below the central courtyard, with only its towering smokestack alluding to its location. Its 75-horsepower engine was installed by 1875.114 There were four boilers, and two were used at a time, with the other two redundant in case of the failure of one of the two operating. The two pairs of boilers alternated between primary and backup duty, ensuring equal wear on the cast iron vessels.15 The boilers also provided hot and cold water, which perhaps later spawned the legend that the Feickert-Lemp Mansion received these utilities straight from the brewery.16 The author is continuing investigations of the area around where the old boiler room was located, and is hopeful that some portion of it may remain extant underground, and even connected to the lagering cellars of the malt house located nearby. More next week.
The author wishes to thank Shashi and Rao Palamand, Lemp Brewery Business Park; Jason Gray, Hours of Idleness; Stephen Walker, David Mullgardt, Peter Crass; Andrew Weil and Katie Graebe, Landmarks Association of St. Louis; Adele Heagney and Trent Sindelar, St. Louis Public Library; Jennifer Friedman, General Electric; Chris Hunter, Vice-president of Collections and Exhibitions, Museum of Innovation and Science, Schenectady, New York; Stephanie Lucas, Henry Ford Museum.
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at [email protected].
1 Compton, Richard J. and Camille Dry, illus. Pictorial St. Louis, the Great Metropolis of the Mississippi Valley; a Topographical Survey Drawn in Perspective A.D. 1875. St. Louis: Compton & Co., 1876. P. 191.
2 “Lager Beer,” The Republican, April 28, 1877, p. 5.
3 Reavis, Logan Uriah. St. Louis, The Commercial Metropolis of the Mississippi Valley. St. Louis: Tribune Publishing Company, 1874. N.P.
4 “A Gigantic Institution,” The Republican, St. Louis, Saturday Morning, April 20, 1878. P. 1.
5 “Construction News for the Central West and Southwest,” Western Contractor, Vol. 20, No. 557 (September 13, 1911), p. 12.
6 City of St. Louis Building Permit, November 8, 1911.
7 “Building 5B: Brew House Addition,” The Historic Lemp Brewery Complex Building Details. P. 12.
8 “A Gigantic Institution,” The Republican, St. Louis, Saturday Morning, April 20, 1878. P. 1.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Compton, Richard J. and Camille Dry, illus. Pictorial St. Louis, the Great Metropolis of the Mississippi Valley; a Topographical Survey Drawn in Perspective A.D. 1875. St. Louis: Compton & Co., 1876. P. 191.
12 “A Gigantic Institution,” The Republican, St. Louis, Saturday Morning, April 20, 1878. P. 1.
13 “Lager Beer,” The Republican, April 28, 1877, p. 5.
14 Compton, Richard J. and Camille Dry, illus. Pictorial St. Louis, the Great Metropolis of the Mississippi Valley; a Topographical Survey Drawn in Perspective A.D. 1875. St. Louis: Compton & Co., 1876. P. 191.
15 “A Gigantic Institution,” The Republican, St. Louis, Saturday Morning, April 20, 1878. P. 1.
16 Compton, Richard J. and Camille Dry, illus. Pictorial St. Louis, the Great Metropolis of the Mississippi Valley; a Topographical Survey Drawn in Perspective A.D. 1875. St. Louis: Compton & Co., 1876. P. 191.
