Trip back in time with these photos of Joseph Schnaider's beer garden

Other than the beautifully restored Centennial Malt House, home to Vin-de-Set and other restaurants, the handsome grounds, houses, and brewery of Schnaider are all gone. But photos survive.

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“And when they did come in it was tumultuously; a sudden and almost unexpected wave of emigration swept over us, and we found the town inundated with breweries, beer-houses, sausage-shops, Apollo gardens, Sunday concerts, Swiss cheese, and Holland herrings. We found it almost necessary to learn the German language before we could ride in an omnibus or buy a pair of breeches, and absolutely necessary to drink beer at a Sunday concert.”

The longtime residents of St. Louis were apparently surprised at the arrival of German immigrants that began around 1840 and their habit of public drinking outdoors in large gatherings, as this 1857 Republican newspaper article attests. But these beer gardens were not simply about drinking their new lager beer; for German immigrants, these new social gathering places were critical components of politics and culture. Many German brewers constructed these country resorts as additions to their breweries, setting themselves up not only as businessmen but also as community leaders. Just like Adam Lemp, Eberhard Anheuser, and Adolphus Busch, Joseph Schnaider then built his own Italianate villas overlooking the landscaped grounds of his brewery.

There are many misconceptions surrounding these beer gardens. First, drinking beer on Sundays, which probably shocked English Protestant residents of St. Louis, would likely have been in moderation. In fact, public intoxication would have been socially unacceptable in a family environment, as it still is in Germany today. Likewise, as advertisements in German-language newspapers of the time attest, food and entertainment feature prominently in the events, and beer is only mentioned among other refreshments. Women frequently were given free admission. German music was in its golden age of classical composing, and performances would have been top-notch.

Perhaps one of the most famous was the Joseph Schnaider Beer Garden, located just behind his brewery at the corner of Chouteau and Mississippi avenues. Schnaider was born in 1832 in the Grand Duchy of Baden, in what is now the southwest corner of Germany. He came to St. Louis in 1854 after training as a brewer in Strasbourg and first worked at the Philadelphia and Green Tree breweries. In 1865, Schnaider started his own brewery at the location that would become famous for entertainment on the northern edge of the Lafayette Square neighborhood. It was a huge plat of land, measuring 577 by 339 feet at the southwest corner. A streetcar line passed by on Chouteau, making the brewery and beer garden easily accessible from the rest of the city. While the brewery and beer garden operated for several years on a lease, as was typical for many brewers, Schnaider closed on the purchase of the land for $13,600 in 1872.

Unfortunately, good photographs of the brewery do not survive, but we can piece together its appearance from advertisements, Compton and Dry’s Pictorial St. Louis, and Whipple Fire Insurance Maps. Like the Anheuser-Busch Bavarian Brewery, it was built on the slope of a hill, and incorporated massive stone vaults that revealed their strength when the brewery and its subterranean cellars were demolished in 1960. Dentist and amateur historian William Swekosky observed heavily reinforced steel beams covered in concrete that were exposed during demolition. As was typical of German brewers at the time, the cellars were needed for making lager beer. 

The architectural style, like many other breweries in St. Louis, was in the Rundbogenstil, a modern industrial style based off German nationalist architectural trends, though interestingly, Schnaider did not turn to Edmund von Jungenfeld as his more famous competitors often did for designs. Also, unlike William Lemp and Adolphus Busch, Schnaider seems to have constructed a malting operation, the Centennial Malt House, that could produce much larger quantities of the precursor to beer than was needed for his own brewery. It was not unheard of in St. Louis for businessmen to produce malt for use by other brewers; the Griesedieck family of brewers did just that at various times after they arrived in St. Louis.

Adam Lemp seems to have closed his rural beer garden near his lagering cellar, preferring to sell off the land for real estate development. Adolphus Busch never built a large beer garden near the Bavarian Brewery. But Schnaider seems to more than other South Side brewers to have embraced his large outdoor entertainment venue. Contemporary photographs reveal extensive, permanent structures, including a large octagonal bandstand in the middle of the beer garden. Pavilions constructed of large wood beams also lined the perimeter of the grounds. Later, a large stage was built around the year 1880, crowned with a statue that was probably St. Gambrinus, the fictional patron saint of brewing. Supposedly the garden was based off the famous beer garden in Heidelberg, Germany; Schnaider may have been personally familiar with the city having grown up nearby as a child.

Extensive advertising in English- and German-language newspapers reveal the entertainment options at Schnaider’s Beer Garden. A photographer captured a visit from a band dressed in Prussian military dress around 1870; at the time, German nationalism peaked due to a war with France, and perhaps the band was on tour to generate pride in the homeland’s success against its longtime enemy. But on other Sundays, the Mississippi Blätter advertised a free concert from a band hailing from New Orleans in 1872. On another weekend, the Anzeiger des Westens advertised a choir performance from the Arsenal. The same newspaper also announced that Schnaider’s Bock Beer was in stores on Monday the last week of April in 1876.

Sadly, other than the beautifully restored Centennial Malt House, home to Vin-de-Set and other restaurants, the handsome grounds, houses, and brewery of Joseph Schnaider and his son Joseph Jr. are all gone. The brewery was demolished in 1960; unlike some other breweries whose lagering cellars were left behind to be discovered decades later, it seems they were destroyed at this time, according to William Swekosky. Joseph Schnaider Jr.’s Second Empire mansion, at 1100 Mississippi, lasted into the 20th century, but like many of the once-grand homes in Lafayette Square, it became a rooming house under a series of owners before being vandalized and demolished. If there is any consolation, the strong preservation code of the neighborhood has assured that sensitive in-fill was built in its place.

Joseph Schnaider Sr. died at the age of 49 in 1881 on a trip back to Germany, in the town that inspired his successful beer garden, Heidelberg. His son, Joseph Jr. lived an interesting life, with business ventures in Mexico. Ultimately, as so many smaller breweries did, the enterprise joined the St. Louis Brewing Association in 1889 in an attempt to compete against Lemp and Anheuser-Busch. But the consortium of small inefficient breweries failed, and the Schnaider branch closed in 1893.

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