Image by Ernesto Pacheco, Design Visualization Lead, Cannon Design
Rendering of the complete 1875 brewery.
Perhaps the greatest irony of Compton and Dry’s invaluable depiction of the Lemp Brewery in 1875 was that it was already obsolete by 1876 when the giant atlas was published. While lithographers were busy engraving the plates, William Lemp pulled a permit on April 22, 1875. It was for a new building across the newly christened 13th Street from his brewery described in city building records as siting on the “S.E. Corner of 13th and Cherokee, 2 Story Brick Warehouse on City Block 1540,” and costing $8,000 to construct.1 No architect’s name was given, but one can assume that Edmund Jungenfeld was involved, or at least his style influenced whomever did.
The Lemp Brewery, as pictured in Compton and Dry.
A year later, when Compton and Dry was published, the Western Brewery’s business statistics were as follows, according to St. Louis: The Future Great City of the World: Capital Stock: $300,000; Annual Value of Business: $400,500; Number of barrels: 60,000; Number of hands: 60; Number of Wagons Employed: 2-horse: 8, 1-horse: 2, 4-horse: 2.2 Likewise, the value of just the buildings and machinery were described in Compton and Dry as exceeding $200,000. A lower figure of 42,000 barrels of beer were listed as being brewed, and among the previously mentioned 60 employees, 8 were teamsters. Interestingly, it was also claimed that the buildings were designed to be expanded when needed. Certainly, the later upper floor additions to the malt kilns demonstrates the accuracy of this statement.3
Exploring the unseen corners—and hidden history—of the Lemp Brewery Complex
Another new discovery made by the author comes from the Western Brewer, published in Chicago, giving us an earlier date for the appearance of refrigeration at the Lemp Brewery:
“Among the recent new improvements among breweries we notice that Wm. J. Lemp of St. Louis has made a contract with Theodore Krausch for his Refrigerating Apparatus for the cooling of six cellars each one hundred by twenty feet, racking room thirty by fifty feet, and ice house by fifty by seventy feet, with sufficient power to also make 350 lbs of ice water a day, the whole work to be completed by the 15th of July [1877].”4
Engraving of the Lemp Brewery in "A Tour of St. Louis" (1878).
Theodore Krausch advertised extensively in the Western Brewer, and was frequently the subject of articles, lending one to believe that a strong symbiotic relationship existed between the architect-engineer and the publication, giving the weight of this new earlier date of 1877 strong reliability.
Reliable facts get a bit scarcer, unfortunately, when dealing with some of the other details of the buildings, particularly with the ice houses, which played a critical role in storing ice even after the dawn of refrigeration. Compton and Dry describes in its text and shows us in the illustration of the Lemp neighborhood there were “two spacious ice-houses, located near the river bank.”5 But a year later, a newspaper article describes “six ice houses, five of which are underground; all are connected with the cellars and are well ventilated. Their combined capacity is 4,000 tons. This is exclusive of the ice houses at the shipping depot, of which mention will be made further on.”6 Are the ice houses at the shipping depot the same mentioned in Compton and Dry along the riverfront? There are still active train tracks going right by the location of the old ice houses. And what does the newspaper article mean when it described ice houses underground at the brewery proper? The author assumes that this must mean some of the barrel-vaulted cellars also stored ice in addition to fermenting and lagering beer (see below). But then a year later, the number of ice houses grows:
“[The Lemp Brewery’s] guide and reporter take a short walk through the genial sun and arrive at the four IMMENSE ICE-HOUSES On the levee, each having a capacity of 3,000 tons. Along the shore adjacent is a fleet of barges, all owned by Mr. Lemp, from which ice is being taken by means of engine power and stored in the houses with a facility truly surprising.
Library of Congress
Detail of Plate 9, Compton and Dry.
“In addition to the storage capacity of the ice-houses on the levee, there are eight ice-houses in the cellars and another in the east end of the main brewing building, the total capacity being 20,000 tons."7
The Lemp Malt House was built to be functional—and beautiful
The ice capacity must have been growing substantially at the Lemp Brewery in just a year, apparently; another two articles confirm the additional buildings on the Levee.8 Likewise, the fermenting cellars, in the basement, and lagering cellars, in the subbasement, are also the subject of confusion. There are clues, however, which give us an idea of what they already entailed, even before the massive brewery expansions of the 1880s:
“The upper cellars are used for the storage of beer while in ferment. The lower one, which is divided into about 20 apartments, contains 2(?)5,000 barrels of beer, stored in huge casks of from 80 to 60 barrels each, arranged in rows sometimes two tiers high. From the artificial cellars connection is had with natural caves of vast extent, which are used for a like purpose.”9
But another source describes a reporter’s visit as “a descent of fifteen feet brings us to the FERMENTING CELLARS, two in number and the largest in the West, which are filled with numerous tubs with their effervescing product. The floor is laid with fine flagging and the room are fifteen feet high, beautifully arched with brick and stone. Another descent brings us to the LAGER BEER CELLARS, seven in number, all of which have natural rock floors and are cross-arched with stone. Immediately above each and resting upon an iron floor, supported by heavy girders, are ice-houses stored with large quantities of ice, which, by means of conduits, keep the atmosphere at a uniform temperature throughout the year. Each of these cellars are filled with double rows of casks having a capacity of 40 to 60 barrels each.”10
How William J. Lemp set a new bar architecturally for St. Louis breweries
These descriptions give us an idea of what earlier accounts of there being subterranean ice houses were; they seem to have been built around the cellars, and provided the natural refrigeration needed before artificial means. The seven lager beer cellars mentioned above surely correspond with the subbasement of the malt house, which was personally visited by the author. The square holes high in the barrel vaults perhaps provided for the movement of cold air between these “ice houses.” However, examination of all the extant cellars failed to find any evidence of the iron girders or extra floors beyond the holes. The author assumes they were removed when the Lemps invested in Krausch’s refrigeration machines, or at the latest when the complex became part of International Shoe. Likewise, the various numbers of cellars given in contemporary descriptions do not match up with current conditions. How did the reporters arrive at this number of cellars? The article also continues to describe the malt house cellars sixty feet below the surface, and two more lagering cellars (where?) and even an ice house built around the cask filling room. It then states there are 25 cellars, but no explanation is given for that number.11 Were some of the old lagering cellars been destroyed in later expansions? Currently, the answer is not known.
1 of 3
Photo by Jason Gray
Basement of the Malt House.
2 of 3
Photo by Jason Gray
Malt House basement.
3 of 3
Photo by Jason Gray
Regardless of these small inconsistencies, all sources are in agreement that the William J. Lemp’s Western Brewery was expanding rapidly, and had already become a landmark in the city. But perhaps some of the most fascinating buildings were yet to be built in the 1880s and 90s, when the brewery expanded to the south, becoming one of the largest of its kind in the world. This summer, the author will examine those monumental buildings, as the dawn of the “Refrigeration Age” comes to the Lemp Brewery.
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; and Ernesto Pacheco, Design Visualization Lead, Cannon Design.
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at naffziger@gmail.com.
1 City of St. Louis Building Permit, April 22, 1875.
2 Reavis, Logan Uriah. St. Louis: The Future Great City of the World. St. Louis: C.R. Barns, 1876. P. 138.
3 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.
4 The Western Brewer, Vol. II (1877), p. 362.
5 Compton and Dry, p. 191.
6 “Lager Beer,” The Republican, April 28, 1877, p. 5.
7 “A Gigantic Institution,” The Republican, St. Louis, Saturday Morning, April 20, 1878, p. 1.
8 “Lager Beer,”p. 5; Dacus, J.A. and James W. Buel. A Tour of St. Louis; or, the Inside Life of a Great City. St. Louis: The Western Publishing Company, Jones & Griffin, 1878. Pp. 274-77.
9 “Lager Beer,” p. 5.
10 “A Gigantic Institution,” p. 1.
11 “A Gigantic Institution,” The Republican, St. Louis, Saturday Morning, April 20, 1878. P. 1.
