The Lemp Brewery Complex, as pictured in the 1879 book, "A Tour of St. Louis"
“As the consumption of beer increased throughout the United States, the brewery buildings and their equipment were built, altered and added to with a great deal more care; men of experience in the architectural and engineering line made a deep study of brewery structures and equipment, and the result was the erection of very creditable plants throughout the country."1
Frederick Widmann, much like last week when speaking about early brew houses in America, likewise could have very well been describing William J. Lemp’s new malt house constructed around 1874 in what the famous architect referred to as the “Second Period.”2 Today, the malt house proper and the malt kiln are considered two separate buildings, but back when the state-of-the-facility first opened, it was a cogent, unified design, with some of the most striking industrial architecture in St. Louis. Most likely, it was designed by the founder of Widmann’s firm, Edmund Jungenfeld, who designed sophisticated brewery buildings around St. Louis, including some for Anheuser-Busch. Widmann continues in his description where barley was transformed through a complex process into malt, the “food” for the beer-producing yeast:
“The malt-house in connection with a brewery was built entirely above ground, if possible, adjoining the brewery proper; the sprouting floors were in the lower stories of this building, the ceilings of these stories being quite low; storage space for malt and barley was arranged in the upper stories; the kiln with at least two drying floors and a very high tower, producing a natural draft. The whole plant was equipped with power transmission for handling barley and malt.”3
The Foundations of a Great American Brewery: The Early Architecture of Anheuser-Busch
The old malt house and its adjoining kiln are still extant in large parts; the first three floors of the malt kiln, with its later additions, still stands due to the intervention of the current owners of the brewery, Shashi and Rao Palamand. Likewise, the deep basements still exist under both the new malt house and the malt kiln building. The malt house rivaled the brew house in size, and definitely held larger lagering cellars.4
Due to the demolition of the malt house in the early 20th century,5 we must rely on lithographs, newspaper articles and fire insurance maps to create an image of Lemp’s second addition to his Cherokee Street brewery. The malt house clearly attracted much attention, as its verbose descriptions in newspapers of the time rival the length of those written for the important brew house next door. Compton and Dry leads off with a vivid introduction:
“The malt house is 106 feet front by 142 feet deep, four stories high above ground, and three cellars deep, including lager beer cellars. Here, every malting season, there are prepared 125,000 bushels of malt. It is furnished with the requisite sprouting floors, kilns, and three elevators—one each for barley, malt, and sprouted barley, making an establishment of extraordinary magnitude in itself. The cellars are laid up in massive limestone blocks, the masonry of which seems heavy enough to support any weight whatever."6
Exploring the unseen corners—and hidden history—of the Lemp Brewery Complex
New insight can be gained by examining Ernesto Pacheco’s virtual reality rendering of the malt house. The author had always considered the building a bit strange in massing and overall design, but with the ability to view the malt house from virtual ground level, the composition begins to make much more sense. The malt kiln dominated Cherokee Street, while the malt house stretched from behind. The giant metal cupola, most likely painted white and designed to look like a four-sided Neoclassical temple, holding grain elevators, was in fact easily viewed from ground level, giving the building a similar composition and massing to colonial buildings such as Faneuil Hall in Boston. In fact, it would have towered over the older and much more primitive brew house from 1866, showing the importance of malting. The exterior appearance also showed the influence of Jungenfeld’s “Renaissance Revival” style, with large pilasters delineating bays and quoining on the corners of the façade. The rounded arch windows demonstrate the building’s affinity for what was called the Rundbogenstil, or Rounded Arch Window Style, popularized by German-American builders and architects.7
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Courtesy of the Missouri History Museum
Detail of Isometric Projection of Lemp Brewery, Whipple Special Risk Book, 1876
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Courtesy of the Missouri History Museum
Detail of the ground plan of Lemp Brewery, Whipple Special Risk Book, 1876
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Courtesy of the Missouri History Museum
Legend from Whipple Special Risk Book, 1876
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Courtesy of Stephen Walker
Lithograph of the Brew House as pictured in a Lemp souvenir book published around 1893.
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Courtesy of Stephen Walker
Lithograph of the Malt House as pictured in a Lemp souvenir book published around 1893.
Again, newspaper articles describe the interior of the malt house complex:
“The ware-rooms used for the storage of barley and malt, have a capacity of three hundred thousand bushels, and immense piles of the choicest Canadian barley may always be seen. Three grain elevators are used for conducting the barley and malt to different parts of the building during the process of preparing it for the brewery. The cleaning and separating machines are the largest in the city, cleaning 800 to 1,000 bushels per hour.8
“The floors are made of concrete with a top layer of cement, and are as smooth as marble, while the elegant and substantial iron columns on which the upper floor rests give the whole interior of the building a grand and imposing appearance.9
“On the second floor of the warehouse are thousands of bushels of barley stored, and adjacent thereto are eight tanks for soaking and cleaning the grain. The third floor contains another ocean of barley—there being 80,000 bushels of choice Canada grain on the two floors. In the center of the third floor is a machine which receives the grains from various elevators, assorts, cleans and separates it as perfectly as done by hand, after which it conveys the malt to the mill in the brewery building in such quantities as desired. The fourth floor is the storage room for malt with a capacity of 60,000 bushels.10
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Photograph by Jason Gray
Exterior, Lemp Brewery Complex.
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Photograph by Jason Gray
Exterior, Lemp Brewery Complex.
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Photograph by Chris Naffziger
Remains of a kiln inside the Malt House.
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Photograph by Jason Gray
Exterior, Lemp Brewery Complex.
“The basement of this building and the upper tier of cellars are used for the growing of the malt. These cellars are unique in design and construction, having groined brick arches and massive irons columns and walls, with a perfectly smooth cement floor, upon which the malt is spread during the sprouting process.”11
As mentioned above, malting requires the barley seeds to germinate, cracking open their hard shells to release the sugars inside. Much of that occurred in the basement of the malt house, as well.12 But brewers did not want the sprout to consume too much sugar—that was reserved later on for the hungry brewing yeast. Consequently, the malt was then placed in a kiln, where it would be dried out before heading to the mash tub in the brew house. One can only imagine, in the fire-prone 19th century, the careful preparations and precautions needed to prevent the malt kiln fires from growing out of control. Newspapers again describe the kiln house, separated from the malt house proper by a giant firewall.
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Photo by Jason Gray
Subbasement of Malt House, showing southernmost barrel vault and access to bedrock wall.
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Photo by Jason Gray
One of Seven Barrel Vaults in the Malt House subbasement.
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Photo by Jason Gray
One of Seven Barrel Vaults in Malt House subbasement, showing air holes.
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Photo by Jason Gray
Malt House basement.
“The kilns consist of three mammoth furnaces, having perforated sheet-iron floors of the latest improved pattern,” they wrote. Lemp constructed the buildings entirely out of fireproof materials such as brick, clay tiles and iron.13 The furnaces, the bases of which two still stand, were “fired by the best quality of coke, and carry the heated air—which is kept isolated from the outside atmosphere by a funnel-shaped structure—to the perforated iron kiln floors above, six in number, where the malt is dried. All connections with the main building are carefully protected by heavy iron doors.”14
When the three additional stories were added for $15,000 to the malt kiln in 1887, the original central kiln was removed, and the two flanking kilns were expanded up into the new floors.15 The massive cellars still stand, and examination of the lowest levels reveal that they were quarried out of solid bedrock (more about the cellars of the entire complex in the future). Besides its shear size and modernity, the malt house also heralded a new era for Lemp Brewery branding that was architecturally distinct from its main rival, Anheuser-Busch, and others in St. Louis.16 In fact, the Renaissance Revival style first seen in the malt house would remain the Lemp’s “aesthetic property” for all new buildings into the 20th century.
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 naffziger@gmail.com.
1 Widmann, Frederick, The Development of the Buildings and Equipments of Breweries from Pioneer Times to Present Day,” The Western Brewer, Vol. 38, No. 1 (January 15, 1912), p. 29.
2 Stiritz, Mimi. “Lemp Brewery,” Benton Park National Register Nomination, 1978, rev. 1985. P. 4; “Building 20: Hop Kiln or Hop Drying Plant,” The Historic Lemp Brewery Complex Building Details. P. 27;
3 Widmann, 29.
4 “Building 21: Malt House,” The Historic Lemp Brewery Complex Building Details. P. 28.
5 “50 Wreckers Needed,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 29, 1906 (Sunday), p. 26. The Lemp Brewery’s advertisement calls for fifty wreckers to report to the malt house. Also, while the massing of the new malt house is clearly similar to the old one, the bricks are clearly newer, and the fenestration of the façade, viewing on two sides, is clearly different from the 1874 building’s depictions in advertisements and fire insurance maps.
6 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.
7 Appel, Susan K., “Pre-Prohibition American Breweries - A Midwestern View,” Brewery History, Vol. 138 (Summer 2010). P. 3. Adapted from Brewer & Distiller, Vol. 5, No. 4 (April 2009), 42-47. This article is a must-read for anyone researching brewery architecture in St. Louis.
8 “Lager Beer,” The Republican, April 28, 1877, p. 5.
9 “A Gigantic Institution,” The Republican, St. Louis, Saturday Morning, April 20, 1878. P. 1.
10 Ibid.
11 “Lager Beer,” The Republican, April 28, 1877, p. 5.
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 “A Gigantic Institution,” The Republican, St. Louis, Saturday Morning, April 20, 1878. P. 1.
15 Stiritz, Mimi. “Lemp Brewery,” Benton Park National Register Nomination, 1978, rev. 1985. P. 4; “Building 20: Hop Kiln or Hop Drying Plant,” The Historic Lemp Brewery Complex Building Details. P. 27; City of St. Louis Building Permit, October 13, 1887.
16 The author suspects that since Edmund Jungenfeld worked for numerous breweries in St. Louis, he therefore developed unique styles for each of his major clients.
