New Orleans Brewing (1893)

The New Orleans Brewing Association promoted the city's beers at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. Its exhibit featured an enormous beer bottle rising up from a pyramid of kegs, bottles and palms, and hard-working gnomes gathering wheat/making beer, and a celebratory gnome raising a frothy glass. Images of the association's "Perfection" and "Louisiana" lagers (shown above) and "Pilsener" were utilized in its printed announcement.

The association included a wood engraving showing off its various brewing plants as though they occupied the same site (shown above). The Crescent City, Louisiana, Pelican, Southern and Weckerling's operations are identified by signage.

By 1901, the Crescent and the Southern were both closed and Chicago brewing concerns were interested in absorbing the remaining plants.(1)

(1)"An Attempt to Absorb the Local Breweries." The Daily Picayune 26 June 1901.

Images above: New Orleans Brewing Association. World's Fair 1893: Exhibit of the New Orleans Brewing Ass'n at Chicago. New Orleans: 1893. Architectural Trade Catalogs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Prohibition & Architecture

The Southeastern Architectural Archive (SEAA) recently finalized the processing of the Lafayette Realty Company Records, 1906-1923. For researchers interested in identifying Jackson Brewing Company corner saloons, this collection may prove beneficial. Records chronicle saloon maintenance matters and also provide information relevant to Jackson Brewing’s real estate divestments following enforcement of the Volstead Act. Representative of social concerns leading to prohibition, the collection includes a letter written by alcohol and drug-addiction physician Dr. F.F. Young, seeking a rental property to accommodate 16-25 bedrooms, associated with his request to the New Orleans commissioner of public safety to treat “people suffering from functional neurosis.”

Read more here.

Image above:  Receipt Statement. Jackson Brewing Company to Lafayette Realty Company, New Orleans. For materials, repairs to saloon located at Dumaine and North Derbigny Street, New Orleans, LA.  30 May 1920.  Lafayette Realty Company Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Field Trip: San Antonio, TX

What with the recent disappointments regarding Louis Lehle's Dixie Brewery on Tulane Avenue, the near-completion of the rehab of August Maritzen's Pearl Brewery [AKA San Antonio Brewing Association] in San Antonio by Roman and Williams was inspirational.

Over the course of his career, Chicago architect August Maritzen (fl. 1890s) worked on nearly eighty breweries in Canada, South Africa & the United States, including the Florida Brewing Company (Tampa FL).  He trained in the office of Fred W. Wolf, who had partnered with Louis Lehle from 1889-1894.(1) By 1896, he claimed to have received brewery contracts from nearly every state in the union.(2) His Pearl Brewery ceased operations in 2001.

This year, the building will reopen as a 146-room luxury hotel.(3)

Images above: Pearl Brewery, San Antonio, Texas, as photographed 13.02.2014 by K. Rylance; Dixie Brewing Company, New Orleans, Louisiana, as photographed 30.03.2014 by K. Rylance.

(1)Susan K. Appel. "Pre-Prohibition American Breweries." Journal of the Brewery History Society 136 as viewed online at: http://www.breweryhistory.com/journal/archive/136/AppelColour.pdf

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Lynn Pearson. "Ale and Farewell: The German Style of Brewery Architecture." Brewery History 123 (Summer 2006) as viewed online at:  http://www.breweryhistory.com/journal/archive/123/Architecture.pdf

(2)"The New Brewery." The Plain Dealer (25 February 1896): p. 5.

(3)Valentino Lucio. "Development at the Pearl Heating Up." My SA (6 February 2013) as viewed online at: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Development-at-the-Pearl-heating-up-4254393.php

Dixie Brewery

The Dixie Brewery held its grand opening on Thursday, 31 October 1907. The management revealed the vast facility to the New Orleans public, serving lemonade, ice cream and danishes to the attendees. Orchestral music punctuated the event.

After securing the Tulane Avenue/North Rocheblave Street site in 1906, Dixie's officers retained the services of the Chicago brewery architect Louis Lehle & Sons to design its modern plant and stables. German- born architect Julius Koch (Stuttgart 1857-New Orleans 1918) supervised the construction of the five-story concrete, steel, brick and asbestos edifice.

Louis William Lehle designed many other noted American breweries, including the Blatz Brewery (Milwaukee), the John Hauck Brewing Company (Cincinnati), the Lake Superior Brewing Company (now Fitger's, Duluth, Mn), the Lion Brewery (Chicago), the Thieme & Wagner Brewing Company (Lafayette, La) and the Detroit Brewing Company. In October 1911, he presented his personal observations on brewery site selection, construction, insulation and design to the Second International Brewers' Congress in Chicago, Illinois. You can read his paper here.

Image above: "New Brewery Opens: Magnificent Plant on Tulane Avenue Receives Guests." The Daily Picayune 1 November 1907, p. 6.