× Expand Courtesy of Stephen Walker

When William J. Lemp Sr. had completed his massive new lagering house in 1882, he surely had other grand schemes in the back of his mind. The failures of his father, Adam Lemp, in Germany were a forgotten memory. In 1876, Pictorial St. Louis described William as “a thorough St. Louisan, keenly alive to the interests and prosperity of the city.” By 1883, the Lemp Brewery was the fourth largest in the country, and William was the president of the brewers’ association. It’s said that he rose between 6 and 7 every morning and inspected every part of the brewery. Already legendary, he won accolade after accolade. And surely he must have realized that the 150- and 250-barrel brew kettles he’d installed in his rustic brewhouse in the waning years of the Civil War would not keep such flattery coming.

Courtesy of Stephen Walker 1885 Brewhouse, interior

Theodore Krausch, who had just completed the Lemps’ new lagering house a few years before, was no doubt ready with new inventions when William came calling to commission a new, state-of-the-art brewhouse. Having perused the complete run of the Western Brewer, I’m amazed at the sheer number of advertisements Krausch submitted for each issue, regaling readers with new inventions and upgrades to his revolutionary refrigeration systems. But as we saw last week, he was also an adept architect, providing his clients with elegant, cogent designs for brewery buildings to hold his new technology. The Western Brewer heralded the opening of Krausch-designed Lemp brew house with an extensive article in 1885:

The well-known St. Louis brewery, Wm. J. Lemp, Esq., has just brought to completion one of the largest and best-appointed brew houses in United States, Mr. Theodore Krausch of North Evanston, Illinois, having been the general architect and engineer. This fine structure, which forms the keystone of the vast series of improvements Mr. Lemp has been making for several years, is a splendid specimen of brewery engineering in all of its details.

Note there is no mention of Jungenfeld & Co. It’s common wisdom around St. Louis that Krausch erected the new brewhouse around the old, and he certainly used largely the same footprint, as the lagering cellars underneath show no sign of being modified. However, up above ground, close examination of the interior of the extant brewhouse shows no signs of the original, vernacular brewhouse that William Lemp began during the Civil War. Is it possible that the new brewhouse was built around the old, and the latter was then slowly demolished? There is no record of Lemp suspending brewing, and with the 1880s as the decade with the peak number of breweries in St. Louis, it’s hard to imagine Lemp halting production. There’s also no record of a temporary brewhouse. And then there’s the problem of the modification of the building by the International Shoe Company, which left the interior almost completely unrecognizable in comparison to the illustration in the Lemp souvenir book. Today, the brewhouse is almost completed surrounded by newer buildings, and it is difficult to see the exterior clearly.

× Expand Courtesy of Stephen Walker Look for the new brewhouse, with multiple smokestacks, in the center of the image.

Nonetheless, the Western Brewer’s text is corroborated by the souvenir book’s image, and it provides us with a fascinating window into a long-gone epicenter of brewing in America. One of the brewers who inaugurated the new brewhouse was John Adam Kayan, who was born in 1863 in Neckarbischofsheim, Baden, Germany, and trained as a brewer there. Convinced that beer was nutritious, Kayan came to St. Louis at 24 to work at the Lemp Brewery. The building he was given to brew his nutritious beer was 72 by 106 feet, with two 300-barrel iron brew kettles, 16 by 16-foot square on the high-ceilinged first floor.

× 1 of 3 Expand Sanborn Fire Insurance map of the 1885 brewhouse × 2 of 3 Expand Sanborn Fire Insurance map of the malt kiln × 3 of 3 Expand Sanborn Fire Insurance map of the second power plant Prev Next

The brew kettles were constructed by the Süssdorf Copper & Iron Mfg. Co., and as Louis Lemp mentioned his family preferring, were heated with fires from below and not from steam coils. Below the kettles were two “settling tanks” on the first floor. Two iron mash tubs 21 feet in diameter were on the second floor, using the “Krausch Improved Mash Machine and Grain Removers.” And on the third floor were rice mash tubs. (Fans of Budweiser might be interested to hear that other St. Louis brewers were using rice as well.) Finally, on the fourth floor, hot water tanks received the exhaust steam. The two spiral staircases are extant, though they have been surrounded by clay block for modern fire code reasons. Originally, it must have been a truly beautiful space, with light streaming through the two skylights and windows on each floor.

× 1 of 2 Expand Photo by Jason Gray × 2 of 2 Expand Photo by Jason Gray Prev Next

The nearby malt kiln, with its distinctive Neoclassical cupola, also received a dramatic vertical expansion. We have a new source of primary documentation to verify construction dates: city building permits for the Lemp property. A building permit was pulled on October 13, 1887, for a three-story expansion to the Malt House (remember, the malt kiln was considered part of the malt house back then) for a cost of $15,000. There is no mention of an architect or building contractor, and I suspect that since the addition was relatively straightforward, master masons could have supervised the adding of three additional floors without need for a professional architect. Critically, the center kiln was removed to provide logistical space for the two flanking kilns that were extended the full six floors of the newly expanded building.

× Expand Photo by Chris Naffziger The remains of a kiln inside the malt house

The remnants of the kilns on the first floor survive, but a photograph taken of a beer delivery wagon on Broadway is the only known image of the two metal chimneys that were removed by International Shoe Company. Sadly, the dangers of construction at the time are related in a New York Times article from September 30, 1887:

During construction of three new floors on malt kiln, hoist broke while lifting one-ton steel girder, which crashed down to the basement, a distance of 65 feet. Daniel Ohmels was killed, Charles Schnoch badly injured, John Kueberts had his ribs and leg fractured, and F. Newman, F. Brass, Charles Mosser, and Albert Schurz were badly injured. Brass and Newman are believed to be fatally hurt.

But such accidents did not stop the Lemp Brewery from continuing to expand, and new buildings continued to rise to fill the demand for beer in 1880s St. Louis—and nationwide.