The 20th century did not start out well for the Lemp Family on a personal level. Frederick Lemp, William Lemp Sr.’s favorite son, passed away in 1901. He would leave behind a daughter who later became embroiled in legal disputes with her own aunts and uncles over their inheritance from their shared patrimony from the brewery.

Then, in 1904, William Sr. would die by suicide. While the newspapers attributed it to a face-saving “temporary aberration of the mind,” his family and business associates believed it was due to the loss of his son, as well as his good friend and fellow brewer, Gustav Pabst. William “Billy” Lemp Jr. took over as leader of the brewery. Far from allowing the family enterprise to slip into a malaise, within a year of his father’s tragic death he quickly turned to the brewery’s architect, Guy Tyler Norton, to embark on a massive modernization campaign.

First up was a dramatic upgrade to the grain storage systems for the Lemp Brewery. Back in the 19th century, William Sr. had constructed a Mansard-roofed grain elevator south of the malt house, in what easily ranks as the most peculiarly low-quality building on the Lemp Brewery property, wood frame no less among stone and brick. Certainly by 1905, when the Lemp Brewery contracted with the Barnett & Record firm to design and construct a new grain elevator, it was clearly time to do so. The first permit issued to the Lemp Brewery was for the foundations only, at a cost of $12,000 in 1905; an article in American Brewers’ Review states the excavation hole was dug down until “solid ground was reached,” which considering the limestone karst topography that pockmarked the area around the brewery, most likely meant the foundations rest on bedrock.

× 1 of 12 Expand × 2 of 12 Expand Photography by Jason Gray The door to the new fermenting house × 3 of 12 Expand × 4 of 12 Expand Photography by Jason Gray The Lemp Brewery grain elevator × 5 of 12 Expand × 6 of 12 Expand Photography by Jason Gray × 7 of 12 Expand Photography by Jason Gray The Lemp shield on the new fermenting house × 8 of 12 Expand Photography by Jason Gray The new fermenting house behind the first boiler house × 9 of 12 Expand Photography by Jason Gray The new fermenting house × 10 of 12 Expand Photography by Jason Gray The new fermenting house × 11 of 12 Expand Photography by Jason Gray The new fermenting house × 12 of 12 Expand Prev Next

The construction of the foundations seems to have gone speedily, as the building permit for the “5-story” grain elevator was issued by the city in 1905 as well, at a cost of $50,000. While the building permit lists Barnett & Record for the revolutionary design of the grain silos, Norton seems to have collaborated on providing the stylistic uniformity so the new elevator would fit with the other Renaissance Revival or Rundbogenstil brewery buildings. A new material, which would dominate the construction of the remaining buildings on the property, also appears: reinforced concrete. Both the American Brewers’ Review and Sanborn Fire Insurance maps confirm reinforced concrete as the load-bearing construction material, even if the exterior of the buildings are still covered in a course of red brick. There are 18 circular silos, each 92 feet tall and 25 feet in exterior diameter. But the innovation of Barnett & Record’s grain elevators consists of the spaces left between the 18 circular main silos: Each of those 10 voids were then also converted into silos, maximizing storage capacity. One should also note in the historic photograph that the elevator tower was originally shorter. A building permit dated July 16, 1910, reveals that the taller penthouse with the iconic “LEMP” lettering was added later for $5,300 and was designed by Norton and his staff.

The elevator also possessed extensive underground networks. On the east side of the building, where there is still a large rectangular pad with old train tracks, was the location of the hoppers, where train cars could be dumped directly into the basement. Barley and malt were kept separate throughout the entire elevator, with their own conveyor belts and hoppers. Now that the silos were no longer conveniently located just to the south of the malt house, the Lemps constructed a tunnel under the rail yard to reach the main malting complex. After contacting curators at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, I was able to obtain an identification for the locomotive parked in front of the grain elevator in a rare photograph: It was a Baldwin 0-4-0, built in Philadelphia. The Lemp Brewery operated a short line railroad, and this engine would have pushed grain cars around the rail yard.

There's another obvious reason why Billy Lemp needed the new grain elevator opened in 1905. The next year, he would order Norton to design a huge new edifice, the New Fermenting Department/House, which was built in the footprint of the old grain elevator. This new building was described in its September 5, 1906, building permit as a “7-story, fire proof fermenting house,” with a price of $110,000. For the first time, we have a name of the contractor, Hartmann Bricklaying and Construction, listed on a building permit. The Gilsonite Construction Company, based in the Wainwright Building (as were many brewer-related architects and other businesses), also worked on its construction.

The American Brewers’ Review gives an extensive description of the building, expounding on the massive loads the reinforced concrete structure could support when all of its fermenting vats were filled with freshly brewed beer, boasting of being able to handle a weight of 600 to 1,200 pounds per square foot. The deflection of the floor plates when fully loaded was 3/8 of an inch, meaning that the reinforced concrete bended less than half an inch in the middle of the room when the full weight of all the Lemp’s beer on one floor was placed on it. The enormous weight was the subject of an entire article in the American Brewers Review, complete with an image of the architect, masons, and other contractors posed in front of a test load of pig iron. Winckle Terracotta Company provided the white ornament, and the Hydraulic Pressed Brick Company supplied the brick that faces this massive concrete edifice.

Besides the New Fermenting House’s soaring height, what's also notable about this building is its relatively shallow depth below ground. There is only a one-story basement; by this time refrigeration had been perfected to the point where, unlike the old lagering house, there was no need to go deep into the bedrock. In fact, I suspect some of the older, deeper lagering cellars were beginning to be abandoned by the early 20th century, as one sensational newspaper article concerning the experience of one Lemp employee illustrates. The exact location is unclear, but the article details how the young man had fallen through a grate into an abandoned lagering cellar, broken both of his legs, and was unable to summon aid with his cries for help. Attacked by giant rats over the course of almost an entire day, he was finally discovered by some of his coworkers, right before he was almost “driven mad.”

Regardless, the worker was brought to the surface, and if he were still alive today, he would instantly recognize two of the least modified buildings on the Lemp property: both the grain elevator and the New Fermenting Department also both retain their original Lemp names in white terra-cotta brick, and in the case of the latter, perfectly preserved terra-cotta company shield logos. Many of the other buildings on the property would be extensively altered on their exteriors during their occupation by the International Shoe Company, with windows crudely punched in their stately façades. Instead, these two monuments to the art of both brewery and brick remain to give us an understanding of the work of Norton and the skilled craftsmen who brought his designs to life.