This Former Beer Company in Indiana Closed in 1972

Muessel-Drewry's Brewery, South Bend Indiana

Date added: August 10, 2024

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Indiana
Brewery

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The Muessel/Drewry's Brewery complex visually represents the transformation of a locally owned, family-operated brewery into part of a large, outside-owned brewing corporation, Drewry's, Limited, and, much later, the closing of the facility when a still-larger corporation took over. Such a story is all too typical and hardly limited to the brewing industry or South Bend.

Begun as a family operation in 1852, the Muessel Brewery was the first of three of local breweries in South Bend-Mishawaka, none of which is still active. The second brewery also had origins in the 1850s, in a small operation begun in Mishawaka by a man named Wagner. Adolph Kamm, along with some partners, purchased the brewery in 1870; in the 1880s, Nicholas Schellinger became a partner and it was incorporated as Kamm & Schellinger Brewing Company. By the turn of the century all of its earliest frame buildings had been replaced; today this largely intact brewery complex along the St. Joseph River is known as the 100 Center. Finally, in 1903, a group of local tavern owners formed the South Bend Brewing Association to manufacture and distribute beer. Two years later the association completed a large brick building on present-day Lincolnway West. It closed in the 1950s, and today the partly abandoned former brewery houses a few local businesses.

Himself a brewer's son born in Arzburg, Germany, Christopher Muessel (1812-1894) arrived in South Bend in 1852 or 1853 (sources vary). Initially he set up his brewery on Vistula at St. Joseph Street, but the business soon outgrew that location. In 1865 Muessel purchased just over 136 acres of land northwest of town west of what became Portage Avenue and erected a larger complex of brick structures. His sons Ludwig (who died in 1884), William, and Edward all assisted their father in the business.

It was not until 1893 that the brewery was incorporated as the Muessel Brewing Company, with patriarch Christopher Muessel as president. He died the following year at the age of 82, and his son Edward succeeded him as president. William Muessel became secretary, and Ludwig's sons, Walter and Adolph, became treasurer/manager and assistant manager, respectively. They brewed Standard and Bavarian beers and sold it in barrels to taverns; and bottled Arzburg Export for home consumption. Expansion of the plant followed incorporation, including a new bottling house almost on the site of the old one on the north side of Elwood.

An attractive new one-and-a-half-story brick office building with limestone trim and a hipped roof covered in curved tile was constructed right after the turn of the century. It sits in the shadow of the Mammoth brewing building to the west of it, constructed in 1911.

Prohibition shut down the manufacture of beer. Muessel briefly attempted to keep going by producing non-alcoholic beverages but was forced to close about 1922. Before the plant reopened after the repeal of Prohibition, the company enlarged the facilities and constructed a new bottling plant to the east of the office building. But, owing largely to management problems, the Muessel Brewing Company faltered.

Following an announcement at their stockholders meeting in August 1936, Muessel Brewing Company reorganized and became a significant part of a Canadian company, Drewry's, Limited, which had just begun distribution in the United States. Drewry's was Canada's first brewing company, started in Winnipeg (Manitoba) in 1877. By the time of its absorption of Muessel, the company had plants in Moosejaw and Saskatoon. Its newly acquired South Bend plant became its first in the United States, headquarters for nationwide distribution as well as manufacture. The company indicated as well that major ingredients used in this plant were to be purchased mostly in the United States, all of which news surely boded well for the region gripped by the Great Depression.

Drewry's also announced that the plant would be completely unionized; there was "a spirit of good fellowship and cooperation in South Bend." Clarence Budd of Muessel was named as executive vice-president of Drewry's new plant.

Since this was to be the center for nationwide distribution, the plant was further remodeled and enlarged, mostly to the south, adding more truck terminals and case storage facilities as needs required. Among the Drewry's brands (besides Drewry's itself) produced were Pfeiffer, Schmitt, and Old Dutch. Drewry's later merged with Associated Brewing Company out of Detroit, but continued to keep its own identity and its ties with South Bend.

But in June 1972, Associated sold Drewry's to the G. Heileman Brewing Company of LaCrosse, Wisconsin. The new owner elected to phase out the South Bend plant, and brewing ceased in the fall of that year. After 120 years, the city no longer had a local brewery. There were efforts to maintain local distributorship of Drewry's beer, but not unexpectedly, there was a good deal of local backlash against the product. A few years after the brewery closed, the present owner acquired the site and named it "Omniplex," intending it to be a startup facility for small businesses. The complex is less than half occupied with various enterprises.

Site Description

There are 7 buildings: the office/brewery complex; the connected keg storage and washing buildings that once were connected to the brewery; the bottling works/warehousing/shipping complex; the 1930s warehouse on the south edge of the property; the mechanics building; the earlier bottling works/spent grain drying building; the small brick building south of the three silos.

There are 2 additional structures: the single grain silo and the three contiguous grain silos.

The former Muessel Brewery predated virtually everything that stands around it. (The original Muessel property contained over 136 acres, with the brewery located at the far north end near the west boundary.) To the north, west, and south, the area is mostly residential. Immediately west is Muessel Park, where a pond was once located from which the brewery harvested ice. The pond and surrounding low land was drained in the 1930s as a Works Progress Administration project. To the east is a commercial district strung along Portage Avenue. The earliest (1860s) brewery buildings on the site, most of which were brick, gradually were replaced, although there appears to be one section, almost completely surrounded, remaining that may date to that initial period. Otherwise, the brewery's oldest surviving buildings date from the turn of the century. Additions and new buildings continued to be constructed into the 1960s under Drewry's. Nearly all the historic buildings are red brick. While there are technically over twenty buildings and structures on the site, the majority are linked one to another and are actually serial additions. What was once a thriving manufacturing and distributing facility is only partially occupied today with a variety of small businesses, offices, and warehousing.

The entire complex lies south of Elwood Avenue, with the exception of the former bottling house (1401 Elwood), which is on the north side at the west edge of the present parking lot and dates to the turn of the century. Sited on the location of an earlier cooper shop, the two-story brick building replaced an earlier bottling works that had stood just to the east. After a new bottling house was constructed in the 1930s on the south side of Elwood, the building was used for drying spent grains and for storage. It features segmental-arched window and entrance openings; the windows are boarded. East of the building is a T-shaped parking lot. During the first several decades of the brewery a dwelling occupied this space; it remained as late as the 1920s.

Strung along Elwood Avenue on the south is a nearly solid wall of brick buildings; starting at the east end is what appears as a flat-roofed, two-story tripartite building of six, two, and two bays, respectively. It has a raised concrete basement and stringcourse. The easternmost portion (today occupied by a thrift store) is a ca.1955 addition to the rest, which was constructed as a new modern bottling works (replacing the bottling house on the north side of Elwood) in the early 1930s. Stretching from the south elevations are two contiguous series of warehouses that once held the finished products (cases of beer). They date from the 1930s through the 1960s the farther from the original building they are. Between the two rows is an overgrown railroad spur. The easternmost extension is a large (over 200 feet) clear-span building on which to the south is another one-story sheet metal structure probably dating from the 1960s. The northernmost part on the westernmost extension has several loading docks on the west elevation; extending from the south is a raised concrete slab foundation and floor, all that remains of a huge warehouse structure (260 by 110 feet) that had been built in the early 1930s. Extending south from that is a postwar concrete block structure that is part one-story and part two-story. All the interiors of these buildings are large open spaces, with nothing remaining from the bottling works.

Back along the south side of Elwood, there is a small space between the former bottling works and the limestone-trimmed brick office building with its hipped roof covered in curved tile. One-and-a-half stories over a raised basement, the building has a crenelated parapet trimmed with limestone and flat-arched windows. Above the entrance "DREWRYS" is carved into the limestone. The interior, while mostly unchanged from its last days as the Drewry's office, has been remodeled over the years. An addition to the south and one on the west that connects the office to the brewery date to the early 1930s.

Westward from the office building is the main brewery itself, a huge structure built in 1911 that wraps around the much older malt house, which may date to the 1860s. This older section is gabled, three-and-a-half stories high. The later sections are flat-roofed and descend from six to two stories (east to west), reflecting the brewing process within, which depended on gravity flow. The building is a visual representation of the procedure. A round concrete smokestack soars upward from the two-story north facade. At the northeast corner is a large limestone-trimmed entrance, above which the letters "DREWRYS" are affixed. The round-arched window openings have limestone sills; those on the lower stories have been bricked up; the remainder are boarded. A ghost sign proclaiming this to be the "home of Drewry's" is visible on the upper stories of the east elevation.

In actuality there are fewer floors than the exterior would suggest; the interiors have exceptionally high ceilings that accommodate the vats and machinery. None of the brewery proper has been rehabilitated and the interior is a tangle of collapsed or discarded building parts, power supply lines and pipes, from many of which hang shreds of asbestos. Part of the south wall of the brewery was demolished in the 1970s to facilitate the removal of the huge copper vats. The three-story-high round openings that remain testify to their size. One vat, evidently of a less valuable metal, remains in place. Fascinating faded painted signs label several of the interior doors, such as "Hops Room" and "Brewmaster's Office."

Connected to the brewery on the south is the foundation and framework of an older brick building (part of it had been added on in 1947) that had been used to store kegs of beer. South of it is a three-story red brick building built for the same purpose in 1950; a one-story section on the south (built the same year) was used for washing out the kegs. To the south, along the south boundary of the property, is a large one-story warehouse building dating to the 1930s that was used to store empty cases and bottles.

Along the west side of the brewery are small brick additions that for the most part had housed grain-receiving facilities; they are adjacent to what remains of a double railroad siding. Immediately west of the brewery proper near the northwest corner is a large metal silo; three more stand in a contiguous row to the south, west of the tracks. Along the western edge of the property, is a non-descript long, flat-roofed "mechanics building" sided with corrugated metal that once housed the brewery's maintenance shops: the electricians, pipe, carpenter, and paint shops, as well as additional storage. There is an electrical power substation immediately north of this building that was erected a few decades ago.