Old Brewery in Cleveland OH
Forest City Brewery, Cleveland Ohio
At the turn of the century Cleveland had two dozen breweries, but only two or three remain, of which Forest City Brewery is the best preserved.
Because of the large population of German and other middle and eastern European immigrant groups in the late nineteenth century, there was a large demand for beer, considered before prohibition to be a commonplace and healthful beverage. Brewers in Cleveland were generally either German or Czech. The Forest City Brewing Company opened in 1904. The business was formed by members of the Czech community. It flourished until the passage of the prohibition amendment and continued for another ten years as a bottling works and a soft drink and ice manufacturer. The Forest City Brewing Company finally closed in 1930.
Because of obsolescence, the consolidation of small family breweries into large monopolistic concerns, and changing land use, most brewery buildings have been abandoned and demolished. Fortunately, the interior of this building has been adapted for a commercial and warehouse function, so that the building still stands to represent an industry that made many serious contributions to 19th century social, economic and technological history.
For use as a warehouse and retail store, the interior has been divided with various impermanent partitions. All that can actually be seen of the original interior structure are floors, ceilings, walls and posts. In this sense there is little to indicate the industrial nature of the building except the size of the spaces. However, there have been no fundamental alterations to the exterior architectural character.
The staple of the Forest City Brewery was a light Bohemian pilsener beer. It advertised its bottled beer in a day when keg and draft beer were far more common. The street facade of the building is the only intact example in Cleveland of the massive, castellated, vaguely German idiom which seemed to be generally mandatory for breweries.
Building Description
This is a large five-story industrial building of brick and concrete construction, designed in a castellated manner though not in any recognized standard style. The entire building consists of a series of blocks: a five-story tier on the street front, diminishing to four stories at the rear, and a two-story block to the east with a tall cylindrical brick chimney and a three-story utility unit behind it.
The facade has a slight angle, the four west bays being parallel to the street and the larger bulk of the building to the east set at an angle back from the street. At the angle and at the west end of the facade, corbeled piers spring from the wall and support machicolated parapets at the roof line. The entrance bay at the east end of the main block forms a shallow rectangular projection from the wall. The doorway is a segmental arch with hood molding and a prominent keystone. On either side of the doorway are round-arched windows with the same treatment.
In the two-story block to the east, there is a large vehicular entrance with a similar segmental arch, plus three smaller bays with segmental arched windows and corbeled courses above. The east and west elevations are featureless and practically windowless, and some previously existing windows have been bricked up.
The extended arrangement of the structure, both vertically and horizontally, was functionally designed to accommodate the brewing process. The height was necessary because of processes based on gravity flow assisted by pumping and hoisting. The horizontal extensions accommodated power, heating and refrigeration equipment, in addition to bottling and loading facilities.
The internal structure consists of post and concrete slab construction. Many of the interior spaces reveal the original arrangement, height and condition. None of the original brewing equipment remains.
The interior has been adapted for use as a furniture display store and warehouse.
North facade and west elevation, looking east (1975)
North facade looking southwest (1975)
