Golden Age Beer was Brewed here until 1957

Schade Brewery - Antique Mall, Spokane Washington

Date added: October 07, 2024

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The old Schade Brewery provides a prominent physical reminder of past social, industrial, and architectural eras. It is a striking landmark, and a local manifestation of national trends.

The building takes its name from Bernhardt Schade, the brew master who had the building erected in 1903. Schade served as assistant brew master at another Spokane brewery, the New York Brewery, for a decade prior to the creation of his own brewing operation. In 1903 he bought the entire oversized city block on East Trent from a Mr. Frost. Included in the purchase was a cold storage building Frost was constructing on the site. Schade hired the architect Lewis Stritesky, designer of the prominent Westminster Apartments at 2301 West Pacific in Spokane, to design a facility based on drawings of a European brewery. Stritesky created a new western addition for the building begun by Frost. A bottling building and steam/pump house: were also built on the property. Initial production was 35,000 to 40,000 barrels a year.

Designed to convey a sense of power and permanence, the Brewery's walls are three feet thick in the basement and first floor, and two feet thick in the upper stories. This building is a typical example of commercial/industrial construction of the early twentieth century in general, and of breweries in particular. Designed to accommodate immense weight and rough use, these buildings nonetheless retain aesthetics in their massiveness. The Schade Brewery's Flemish style stepped parapet tower, with its rounded apex and gambrel roof, are reminiscent of the Dutch Revival influence, similar to that of its contemporary, the Old Holy Names Academy north of the Spokane River. The soaring, round arched windows of the primary facade, while artfully rendered, also fulfilled the utilitarian purpose of displaying the scientific brewing works to the general public.

The Schade Brewery, was fairly typical for its day. All breweries had some sort of tower to supply their gravity-fed operations; all were built on a large, imposing scale for both practical and artistic reasons. In Spokane, the Hiebner and the New York breweries were good examples, but the Schade Brewery was considered the premier establishment.

In 1910, five large-scale breweries were in operation in Spokane. Today the Schade Brewery building is the only remaining structure from that era designed solely for the production of beer. The Brewery is significant also as a tangible reminder of the nations' social past. Created in an era of heavy alcohol consumption, when small, local breweries satisfied most of the region's desire for libations, it was a victim of state prohibition in 1916, and national prohibition in 1920. Attempts to convert to the production of non-alcoholic beer and pop were largely a failure. The Schade family sold the building in 1918, and a rapid succession of title changes followed. During the years of prohibition, the building stood vacant for an extended period.

During the depths of the Depression, the vacant building became a flophouse for migrant men. The brewery was situated in the midst of several transcontinental railroad lines, and was a logical sheltering place. As the operation became increasingly organized, specific duties were assigned to its occupants. The city eventually gave it an official blessing and assisted its clientele by supplying living needs. Know as the "Hotel de Gink," the shelter operated from 1930 to 1933, and was a local example of a national predicament of mass unemployment and transience.

National Prohibition ended in 1933, and the building saw a return to the brewery process under the auspices of the Golden Age Brewery. Prominent Spokane architect G.A. Pehrson was employed to make improvements and changes to the building. These included much concrete work, the replacement of wood floors, and the construction of the eastern 57' x 104' addition. The bottling operation was moved from the Gothic style outbuilding to the main structure. Golden Age, managed by grocer M. Rosauer, claimed to brew "the beer that made Milwaukee jealous."

Golden Age sold out to another long-time Spokane brewery, Bohemian, in 1948; Bohemian, in turn, sold the operation to the Chicago-based Atlantic Brewing Company.

Brewing was increasingly becoming a business of giant brew houses, and local mid-sized operations began to disappear by the 1950s. Atlantic liquidated its interests in the old Schade plant in 1957, selling the property to Samuel Rykus; Rykus turned the location into Inland Metals. The once majestic brewery became a storehouse for salvaged building materials, and the grounds became a junk yard. Colossal piles of scrap surrounded the building for approximately the next thirty years, and the Brewery was left to deteriorate.

In 1977 the four-acre site was segregated; the portion containing the Brewery building was sold to Louis Ray. The steam/pump house had been leveled circa 1970. Ray had designs to restore the main building and use it as an antique store. He sandblasted part of the Brewery from its green paint, but soon abandoned his attempt, converting the building for storage. The once quaint bottling works, altered by the addition of a concrete block office for the scrap yard on its north facade, suffered an internal fire and was gutted. This, combined with contamination of the site by its long time use as a storage shed for empty barrels of chemicals, forced demolition of the structure in 1991.

The main building remained in use as storage space until 1991, when the present owners, Louis and Gailya Bonzon, acquired the Brewery. Since then, most of the first floor has been renovated and currently holds a carpet business and antique store. The upper floors remain unused, and the third (as well as the upper stories of the tower) are in a serious state of disrepair.