Today is the 72nd birthday of Pat McIlhenney, brewmaster and founder of Alpine Beer Co. near San Diego. Pat made some amazing hoppy beers. Unfortunately, his beers are hard to find up our way, and then his brewery was acquired by Green Flash Brewing several years ago, who eventually shut it down. Happily, he started McIlhenney Brewing, along with family members Shawn, Jamie and Val McIlhenney, and has subsequently retired. Join me in wishing Pat a very happy birthday.
Today is the birthday of Louis F. Neuweiler (April 28, 1848-1929). He was born in Württemberg, Germany, and his family was in the brewing business. He came to the U.S., first to Philadelphia, where he worked at local breweries there and also met his wife. In 1891, he moved to Allentown, where he formed a partnership with Benedict Nuding, who had started the Germania Brewery there in 1875 or 78 (sources differ). When they started their partnership, the brewery name was changed to the Nuding Brewing Co, but after Neuweiler bought out Nuding in 1900, it became the Louis F. Neuweiler & Son Brewery, which it remained until finally closing for good in 1968.
Here’s a short biography from Find-a-Grave:
Born into a family of brewers, he immigrated to America and settled for a time in the Philadelphia area. While in Philadelphia he met his wife Sophia. They had 16 children. They relocated to Allentown, PA in 1891. He formed a brewing partnership with longtime brewer Benedict Nuding but bought him out in 1900. In 1906 his son Charles joined the brewery and the business became known as L.F. Neuweiler & Son. The “new” Neuweiler Brewery was opened on April 28, 1913 at the corner of Front and Gordon Streets in Allentown. His son Louis joined the family business and the company became known as Louis F. Neuweiler & Sons. Their slogan was “Nix Besser” meaning “none better”. After Louis died in 1929 the business was run by Charles Neuweiler. Neuweiler beers were regional best sellers until they went out of business in 1968.
This story of the brewery is from a local Allentown newspaper, The Morning Call, from 2004:
Louis Neuweiler came to Allentown in 1891. Beermaking then was more than 100 years old in the Valley, its roots going back to the Moravian brewers in Bethlehem. Neuweiler hooked up with longtime brewer Benedict Nuding, whose business was at Seventh and Union streets. In 1900, Neuweiler bought out Nuding. In 1906, he took his oldest son, Charles, into the business that became L.F. Neuweiler & Son.
The Seventh Street location was too small for expansion, so in 1911 the Neuweilers purchased 4.5 acres at Front and Gordon streets and hired Philadelphia architects Peukert and Wunder to build the brewery. It got its water from an underground lake 900 feet below. Neuweiler ordered his own generators for electric power and had separate wells drilled.
Neuweiler opened at this location on April 28, 1913. That day, son Louis P. entered the business and its name became Louis F. Neuweiler & Sons, a name it would retain until 1965. (Louis P. Neuweiler later left the family business and became a local banking executive at Merchants National Bank.)
Neuweiler’s truly was a family operation. Charles Neuweiler sometimes drove the horse-drawn wagon to Bethlehem loaded with barrels. The women in the family kept the books.
Neuweiler’s also was something of an absolute monarchy. Generous to his family, Louis F. Neuweiler had a temper and little patience with those he regarded as lesser mortals. He once ripped the telephone out of the wall in frustration and told the operator she could go to hell when she couldn’t understand the phone number he was asking for.
Louis F. died in 1929. It was during Prohibition and Neuweiler’s was brewing only near beer with 3.2 percent alcohol and making mixers under the names Purity and Frontenac Pale. In the early 1930s, Charles Neuweiler turned down an offer to buy the brewery for $500,000 from gangster/bootlegger Arthur Flegenheimer, aka Dutch Schultz. According to son Theodore Neuweiler, his father said, “We have always made honest beer,” and ordered Schultz off the property.
At first, the post-Prohibition years were good for Neuweiler’s. Its slogan “nix besser,” none better, was shared across the community. But by the early 1960s it found itself trapped between the growing market share of the beer giants of the Midwest and the growing preference for its lighter product.
On May 31, 1968, Neuweiler’s closed its doors for the last time, $800,000 in debt.
Over the years, some of the equipment was sold. One of the stainless steel brewing tanks ended up at the Milford Park campmeeting grounds in Old Zionsville to be used for water storage.
This is a translation of his German Wikipedia page:
Neuweiler was born as the son of a family of beer brewers. He emigrated to the United States and began to work as a brewer in Philadelphia . Within a few years he obtained the title of a Braumeister. In 1891 he met the businessman and hotelier Benedict Nuding, who had founded the Germania Brewery in Allentown in 1878.
Neuweiler became Nuding’s business partner. Together, they managed the brewery with success – until 1900 they already reached an annual output of 20,000 barrels . When Nuding retired in the same year, Neuweiler took over his shares and moved his sons into the company’s business during the following years. In 1925 the name Louis F. Neuweiler’s Sons, valid until the brewery was closed, was chosen for the brewery.
The brewery continued to be successful. In 1913 Neuweiler had a new, larger brewery complex built. The new brewery employed forty employees and reached an annual output of 50,000 barrels. A subterranean lake under the property was opened and a separate power plant was built – the brewery was thus independent of the electricity and water supply through the city.
During the period of prohibition, the Neuweiler brewery produced alcohol-reduced light beer and lemonade. At the height of its success, the Neuweiler brewery produced about 400,000 barrels a year and had 15 beer brands in its assortment. On May 31, 1968, she was closed.
Neuweiler died in 1929, his sons took over the management of the company. He is buried at the Fairview Cemetery in Allentown.
And this history of the brewery is from the English Wikipedia page:
Neuweiler Brewery was founded by Louis Neuwiler, who bought out longtime local brewer Benedict Nuding in 1900. Nuding’s operation was limited by its location, and in 1911 Neuweiler and his son, Charles, eager to expand, hired Philadelphia architects Peukert and Wunder to build a new complex some distance away, at Front and Gordon streets.
The brewery, featuring its own generators for electric power, opened in 1913. By 1932, the brewery buildings and the warehouse building were joined as one structure, and the former machine warehouse became an independent electric plant with an ammonia tank and ice machine. A pump warehouse had been added onto the northwest corner of the former stock warehouse, and a two-story bottling plant with a basement was located to the north of the other buildings. Neuweiler produced several brands of beer: Light Lager, Cream Ale, Stock Ale, Premium Ale, Bock (seasonal), Half & Half, Porter, Stout and Hochberg. Most were available in the 12 oz. “Steinies” or Export bottles, quarts, cans or kegs. When in full operation, Neuweiler’s was one of Allentown’s largest employers.
By 1950, the bottling plant was extended to the corner of North Front Street and Liberty Street, the stock warehouse was extended toward North Front Street, and a tile ash hopper was located behind the boiler house.
Brewery operations ceased in 1968 due to competition from national breweries. However, the Neuweiler recipes and brand names were purchased by the Ortlieb Brewery of Philadelphia, who also purchased the Fuhrmann and Schmidt (Shamokin) breweries in 1966. After the brewery’s closure, the F&S Brewery produced several of the Neuweiler beers (Porter, Light Lager and Cream Ale) from around 1970 until closing in 1975. After F&S closed, the Ortlieb brewery continued Neuweiler Cream Ale at the Philadelphia plant until the late 1970s.
“This photo from 1915 shows the laboratory at the Neuweiler Brewery that created the various brews made and sold by the company.”
These pages are from “American Breweries of the Past,” by David G. Moyer:
And this lively history is from a local Allentown television station:
Arthur Flegenheimer, aka “Dutch Schultz,” is not remembered as one of your major league 1930s gangster headline-grabbers like Al Capone or Jack “Legs” Diamond. But such a view badly underestimates the man and his ruthlessness. And when he strode into the offices of Louis F. Neuweiler and Sons Brewery on Front Street in Allentown in 1932 he must have seemed formidable enough.
Cutting to the chase, the dapper dressing “Dutch” had some words for brewery owner Charles Neuweiler, son of the brewery’s founder and then the company’s president. He wanted to buy out the Neuweiler family operation which, since the start of Prohibition in 1920, had been reduced to turning out ice cream, “near beer” and carbonated soda water. He was offering $500,000 in cold cash.
Schultz may have thought he had made Neuweiler an offer he couldn’t refuse. It’s not known if the Dutchman’s “boys” were hanging around with itchy trigger fingers on their “gats” during the conversation.
But according to Charles’s son, Theodore Neuweiler, who recounted this tale to the press in the 1950s, his father was not biting. “We have always made honest beer,” he recalled his father saying before ordering Schultz off his property. And apparently the gangster went quietly.
Shortly thereafter FDR would be elected, Prohibition banished, and happy days here again. And “Dutch” would die in 1935 on a hospital operating room table in Newark, New Jersey, following a hit by rival gangsters.Today Neuweiler’s, which closed in 1968 and was left in a state that could only be called abandonment, is once more in the local news. Plans about its possible future as apartments, lofts or shops as part of the Neighborhood Improvement Zone- aka “the NIZ”- have caused much speculation. Could Neuweiler’s — at least the building if not the brewery — come back to life?
All of this activity would have undoubtedly impressed old Louis F. Neuweiler, the brewery’s founder, although he might be disappointed that nobody is talking about making beer there. As a native of Wurttemberg, Germany he knew what beer was to all good Germans of his time and place- a thick hardy brew that was both food and drink and had been as long as there had been Germans.
For a time, Neuweiler worked in a Philadelphia brewery and rose within the ranks of the company. In 1891 he came to Allentown and teamed up with longtime local brewer Benedict Nuding. A Civil War veteran and several years Louis Neuweiler’s senior, Nuding’s brewery was located at 7th St. near Union.
Beer making had been going on in the Lehigh Valley probably since the first German settlers arrived. Commercial operations in Allentown are usually traced to the Eagle Brewery that opened at Lehigh and Union Streets in the 1850s. By the start of the 20th century there would be a number of breweries dotting the Lehigh Valley in Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton.
By 1900 Nuding was ready to retire and Neuweiler brought him out. But even then Neuweiler had bigger ambitions. He had just admitted his son Charles into the business and began to look around for a space that was much larger than the site on 7th Street and also closer to a railroad line that would make shipment easier.
What the new brewery also needed was a supply of pure water.
Neuweiler found all that he was hoping for- even a lake of pure water 900 feet underground- on a 4.5 acre site at the corner of Front and Gordon Streets. To build the brewery he hired Peukert & Wunder, Philadelphia architects with a national reputation for brewery design.
Work began on Neuweiler’s in 1911. It was completed two years later and opened for production on April 28, 1913. The Lehigh Valley had seen many brewery openings before but Neuweiler’s was something special. With its red brick tower that could be seen for many miles it dominated the horizon along the banks of the Lehigh River. In an extra architectural flourish a huge N, similar to those on a Paris bridge that honored Napoleon, framed and mounted in a colossal cartouche, was placed on the side of the building. The era didn’t nickname brewers “beer barons” for nothing.
Despite its size Neuweiler’s was a family business. Charles had been required to learn the business from the ground up, including driving a wagon load of beer barrels when called on to do so. Even the female members of the family played a role by keeping the brewery’s books.
Neuweiler’s was not a democracy. Patriarch Louis F., while a generous father to his family, expected obedience from them, even as adults. Although there is nothing on the record this may explain why one of his sons, Louis P., left the family business and got into local banking.
One of the longtime family stories that was recorded dealt with a confrontation between Louis F. and a telephone operator. When she could not understand the number Neuweiler was asking for he became so enraged he suggested there was a warm place she should go and ripped the phone’s cord out of the wall. His sons, fearing local reaction and gossip, told their father he had to call her back and apologize. According to the surviving sources the exchange went something like this:
Neuweiler: “Is this the woman who I told to go to hell?”
Operator: (timidly) “Yes”
Neuweiler: “Well you don’t have to go now!”Louis F. died in 1929 and with the end of Prohibition in 1933 Neuweiler’s flourished. But the rise of national brewers and the post World War II preference for lighter beers doomed Neuweiler’s and other local ethnic brewers. But, who knows. Thanks to the NIZ the big N may rise again.
Today is the 60th birthday — The Big 6-O — of Michael Demers, brewmaster of Discretion Brewing in Soquel, which is near Santa Cruz. Michael’s been brewing most of his adult life, and originally started at some Colorado brewpubs before working at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Fort Collins. More recently, he moved closer to home to brew at Boulder Creek Brewing, and in 2012 made it back to his home town of Soquel to help open Discretion. He’s making some great beers at Discretion, and winning awards for his efforts. Join me in wishing Michael a very happy birthday.
Today is the birthday of Ernst F. Baruth (April 28, 1842-February 1906). While what would become Anchor Brewing began during the California Gold Rush when Gottlieb Brekle arrived from Germany and began brewing in San Francisco at what he called the Golden City Brewery, it didn’t become known as Anchor Brewing until 1896, when “Ernst F. Baruth and his son-in-law, Otto Schinkel, Jr., bought the old brewery on Pacific Avenue and named it Anchor. The brewery burned down in the fires that followed the 1906 earthquake, but was rebuilt at a different location in 1907.” Baruth had passed away the same year as the earthquake, shortly before it.
I did discover that he was a president of the Norddeutscher Verein (or North German Association) in 1886 as noted in this portrait from a book celebrating the organization’s 25th anniversary, or Silver Anniversary 1874-1899.
According to Anchor Brewery’s website:
[In 1896] German brewer Ernst Frederick Baruth and his son-in-law, Otto Schinkel, Jr., bought the old brewery on Pacific (the first of six Anchor locations around the City over the years) and named it Anchor. No one knows why Baruth and Schinkel chose the name Anchor, except, perhaps, for its indirect but powerful allusion to the booming Port of San Francisco.
Surprisingly, there isn’t much biographical information about Baruth. He was born somewhere in Germany, and arrived in New York City on August 13, 1875, on a ship named the “SS Neckar” that departed from Bremen, Germany and then sailed to Southampton, England, before heading west to America.
The Anchor Brewery in the early 1900s.
Today is the 70th birthday of Carl Kins, who lives in Belgium, but judges all over the world. I’ve judged beer competitions with Carl in Japan, Australia, his native Belgium and the United States, too. Carl’s an active member of the ECBU, the European Consumers Beer Union, and Zythos. And most importantly, he has a great palate, and is a terrific person to spend time with talking about beer, or anything else. Join me in wishing Carl a very happy birthday.
Today is the birthday of Adam Gettelman (April 27, 1847-February 14, 1925). He and his father-in-law, George Schweickhart, founded the Strohn & Reitzenstein Brewery in 1854, though the same year it became known as the Menomonee Brewery. When Schweickhart passed away in 1876, Adam Gettelman became the sole owner and renamed it the A. Gettelman Brewing Co. The Milwaukee brewery managed to remain open during prohibition and began making beer again in 1933. When Adam Gettelman died in 1925, his sons continued to run the brewery, but in 1961 was bought by rival Miller Brewing.
This short biography is from the Wisconsin Historical Society:
He began his apprenticeship in the brewing business in 1865, and in 1871 was admitted to partnership in the Menominee Brewery, owned by his father-in-law, George Schweikhart. In 1876 Gettelman became sole proprietor, and in 1887 incorporated the business, which was known as the A. Gettelman Brewing Co. after 1904. He was president and treasurer of the firm (1887-1925). His son, FREDERICK GETTELMAN, b. Wauwatosa, attended Racine College and graduated from a school for brewers, the Wahl Henius Institute, Chicago (1909). He became president of the A. Gettelman Brewing Co. on his father’s death, and was also president of the Frederick Gettelman Co., manufacturers of high-speed snow plows. Gettelman was instrumental in developing several innovations that alleviated the problems of modern brewing, including a steel barrel, a glass-lined beer storage tank, and a beer pasteurizer. He also developed a farm tillage machine.
And this an early history of the A. Gettleman Brewery, from the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee:
The A. Gettelman Brewing Company (1856-1961) was one of Milwaukee’s major industrial brewers. Although remaining a mid-sized brewer among the city’s giants, Gettelman was an important innovator of beer packaging and advertising and a significant acquisition in the expansion of the Miller Brewing Company.
The Gettelman Brewing Company originated as George Schweickhart’s Menomonee Brewery, established near what is now 44th and State Streets in 1856. Coming from an established brewing family in Mühlhausen, Alsace, Schweickhart purchased a half-built brewery started by Strohn and Reitzenstein, who had both died in a cholera epidemic two years earlier. The brewery’s location in the Menomonee River Valley west of Milwaukee provided ideal access to clean water from nearby Wauwatosa wells, ice from the river, natural caves for storage cellars, and hops and barley from surrounding farms, while still maintaining easy access to Milwaukee and surrounding towns via the old Watertown Plank Road and later railroad connections.
In 1871, Schweickhart brought Adam Gettelman on as a partner in his brewery. Gettelman was an apprentice at the brewery who had married Schweickhart’s daughter in 1870. In 1874, Schweickhart sold off his portion to his son-in-law, Charles Schuckmann, whom Gettelman later bought out to become sole owner of the brewery in 1876. Officially named the A. Gettelman Brewing Company in 1887, the Gettelman family remained in control of the brewery for three generations, until it was sold in 1961.
Fire destroyed a significant portion of the original brewery in 1877, and Gettelman rebuilt and updated their facilities. Gettelman kept the brewery relatively small—just big enough for the family to manage and maintain a high quality product. In 1891, Gettelman introduced its flagship “$1,000 Beer” brand, offering a $1,000 reward to anyone who could prove that it was made with anything other than pure barley malt and hops. Gettelman also introduced its popular “Milwaukee’s Best” brand in 1895.
Gettelman survived Prohibition making “near beer” and through several different investments outside of brewing, like the West Side Savings Bank, the development and manufacturing of snow plows, gold-mining in the American southwest, and a sugar beet processing plant in Menomonee Falls. Gettelman returned to brewing in 1933, with Frederick “Fritz” Gettelman as president.
And this history of the brewery is from a company brochure from 1954, when the brewery was celebrating its 100th anniversary.
OBSCURE as might seem the relationship between a cholera epidemic and the origin of a brewery, no one recording the history of the A. Gettelman Brewing Co. can over-look the fact that if it had not been for the former the latter might never have existed — or, at least, not as it is known today.
Around the middle of the nineteenth century, two men known as Strohn and Reitzenstein bought a three-acre tract of land on the old Watertown Plank Road in a village west of Milwaukee then called Center City. Even in that early year, the seed of the reputation Milwaukee was to gain as the world’s beer capital was beginning to show signs of germination. The predominantly Germanic strain of its population probably had something to do with it, but the real reason was the same then as it is today — its proximity to a limitless supply of water ideally suited for brewing good beer.
There was at least one other important consideration that led the Messrs. Strohn and Reitzenstein to select the spot they did — the fact that it was close to the Menominee River from which ice might be harvested to supply the all-important refrigeration.
But, despite their canny judgment in the choice of a site for their brewery and all their plans for its construction and operation, the two men were never to see their dream materialize. Both were cut down by the cholera epidemic then ravaging the country at a time when their project had advanced no further than the excavation stage.
Meanwhile, the word that Milwaukee was an ideal spot for brewing beer had reached as far east as Buffalo, New York. One of its citizens, a brewmaster by the name of George Schweickhardt, heard it and, with his brother, made the trip west to investigate. They came across the excavation on the Watertown Plank Road. Like the men who had first chosen it, the Schweickhardt brothers knew a good spot when they saw one and it was not long before the structure which today forms part of the A. Gettelman Brewing Co. began to take shape.
The problem the Schweickhardts faced was not merely one of building their brewery and selling its product to an eagerly awaiting public. Even then competition in the beer business was keen. There were about 15 other breweries in and around Milwaukee vieing for the favor of the great Milwaukee beer palate. It was then, as it is now, a question of survival of the fittest.
In time, however, the brewing know-how George Schweickhardt had accumulated in New York and, before that, as a brewer and wine-maker in his native Alsace began to pay off. With the disappearance of the weaker of his competitors and passage of the years, it became evident that the Menominee Brewery — as it was then called — would take its rightful place in the great family of breweries that was to make Milwaukee a by-word wherever beer drinkers gather.
For anyone accustomed to highly organized metropolitan Milwaukee, the thirteenth largest city in the nation, it is difficult to imagine the rugged conditions existing when the A. Gettelman Brewing Company was in its early formative stages.
Little similarity can be found for example between State street, today one of the city’s most heavily traveled thoroughfares, and the old Watertown Plank Road which, at one time, was the brewery’s only avenue to the Milwaukee market. Perhaps no one intimately connected with the brewery remembers this state of affairs more poignantly than “Uncle” Charlie Schmidt, veteran employee and secretary of the company at the time of his retirement in 1950. “The Watertown Plank Road . . . was a dirt road subject to heavy travel by wagons hauling stone from the stone quarries nearby,” Uncle Charlie writes in his memoirs. “Extensive travel on this road resulted in six inches of fine dust in dry weather and a like amount of mud when it rained. From the Miller Brewing Co. to our plant was a walk consisting of two 12-inch planks side by side. Even so, we often had to wear rubber boots for there was still plenty of mud to walk through.”
In those days, according to Uncle Charlie, the trip from the brewery up the hill to 35th Street was a task for only the stout of heart. So arduous was the ascent, in fact, that the team of horses starting to pull a wagon loaded with 35 to 40 half barrels had to be augmented about half way up the hill by an additional team.
As though just traversing this road was not painful enough, travelers entering the city were forced to pay a fee at a toll gate located a block west of the brewery.
There Was a Bright Side
But all was not hardship for those who shared their youth with that of the A. Gettelman Brewing Company. In striding toward its destiny, a city often tramples underfoot some of its inherent natural charm. The Menominee River, now sullied by the wash from heavy industry, was once a fisherman’s dream. Just west of the brewery the river was dammed up to make a reservoir for winter ice-cutting operations. In the spring of the year, when the water was high, pike, pickerel and suckers came up the river to spawn — and to fall prey to the fishermen along its banks. What fish — particularly suckers — the farmers couldn’t eat they boiled thoroughly and used for hog-feed.As was mentioned before, protecting the beer against the extreme temperatures prevailing in this part of the country was a major problem. Refrigeration as we know it today was not even in the dream stage and the methods of keeping the beer cool in summer and warm in winter bordered on the bizarre by present day standards. About the year 1878, Gettelman had two ice house branches, one located at 14th and Highland and the other at S. 10th and Walker. Every afternoon, Gettelman’s two beer peddlers — Biegler and Hartzheim by name — would get their day’s load of beer from the brewery and haul it to the ice house assigned to their use. There they would unload it, store it overnight, and load it up the next morning to be delivered to their customers.
Tough on Country Drivers
The rigors of those handling the beer in the city was nothing however, compared to those with which the country peddlers were confronted daily. Two men, a Henry Stadler and a Bill Dienberg, covered, between them, Elm Grove, Brookfield, New Berlin, Butler, Fussville and Menomonee Falls. Though this would be considered an extremely limited area today, it took the two men a full 12-hour day to make deliveries. And this does not take into consideration the time it took them to load up in the morning, and to feed and clean their horses at night. As compensation for their efforts, each man received a cool $45 per month.Close Employee Association
But the lack of transportation facilities and personal conveniences which worked such great hardships on early brewery employees made for a close association between them which belongs only to the past. Since most of the early employees of the Menominee Brewery were single, they lived and boarded on brewery premises. A large room was provided for sleeping quarters and what is now the office reception room served as a dining area. The task of serving the men their meals fell to Mr. Schweickhardt’s daughter and a full day’s job it was. Breakfast was at 6 a.m., lunch at 9, dinner at 12 and supper at 6 p.m.As Magdelana Schweickhardt bustled around the groaning board matching the supply of good German home-cooked victuals to the hearty appetites of the boarders, she was regarded with special interest by a man whose natural leadership qualities had won for him the position of brewery foreman. As day followed day, the friendship between Magdelana Schweickhardt and her father’s foreman ripened and eventually culminated in marriage. That was in 1870 and the day was a fateful one for the Menominee Brewery for the man Magdelana married was Adam Gettelman who was later to give his name to the company as it is known today.
By the year 1870, the brewery which Strohn and Reitzenstein had begun about 18 years before had grown into a vigorous young business. The brewing lore that George Schweickhardt had learned in his former brewery at Buffalo plus the increasing demands of a robust and thirsty Milwaukee populace had put the business on a sound financial footing and made it a force to reckon with on the competitive market.
Jointly guiding its destiny until 1876 were George Schweickhardt and his son-in-law Adam Gettelman. In that year, the senior partner of the firm left the brewing business to devote his full time to a stone quarry on the Hawley Road of which he was half-owner. The move left the youthful Adam Gettelman to conduct the affairs of the brewery by himself.
The next year — 1877 — was a trying one for the new proprietor and everyone associated with the brewery. About noon of October 30 fire struck the brewery buildings and caused more than $31,000 damage before it was finally brought under control.
A good idea of the journalism of the day can be gained from the story of the catastrophe carried by the Milwaukee Sentinel the next day. It read, in part: “Yesterday noon a man rode in on horseback post-haste, over the Watertown Plank Road, to secure the services of the fire department. The brewery of Adam Gettelman & Co. in the Menominee Valley, about half a mile northwest of Fred Miller’s Brewery, had taken fire and would be reduced to ashes if the city authorities failed to honor his call for assistance. The excited rider reined in his perspiring horse before the house of No.5 and thence word was telegraphed to headquarters. ‘Fire beyond the city limits — shall we run the steamer?’ was the announcement. The code would not admit of a more satisfactory message. Chief Lippert hitched his gray horse in a twinkling and drove off as if the very Nick had taken to the road in the rear, and soon answered the telegraph in person. The steamer was ordered out, Supply Hose No. 1 was telegraphed for and with all due speed the burning buildings were reached.”
The story goes on to relate how heroically the firemen labored to save the brewery as well as the home of Mr. Schweickhardt to the south of the burning buildings and the two-story brick ice-house to the north. Concerning the fire-fighters’ valiant efforts, the article had this to say: “Engineer Dusoldt kept his steamer steadily at work, and so evenly that there was no bursting of hose to interrupt the service. All the firemen labored with a will that reflected a credit on the service and gained them the praise of all on the grounds. The steamer of the National Home had been sent for, but, owing to some misunderstanding, the veterans failed to appear. The Milwaukeeans were obliged to fight the fire alone, and right royally did they charge upon and subdue it.”
Brewery Suffers Financially
Despite the vigor with which the fire-eating stalwarts “did charge upon and subdue” the blaze it consumed enough of the Gettelman property to burn a sizable hole in the brewery’s bank account since the loss was only about half covered by insurance.Despite everything, though, a news item appearing in the Sentinel of November 3, 1877 — only a few days after the fire — stated that contracts were being let by the brewery for reconstruction.
With completion of the rebuilding program, the A. Gettelman Brewing Company continued its steady march toward popular favor. Keeping pace with the growth of the brewery was the family of Adam and Magdelana Gettelman. In 1884 a son, William, was born to them followed three years later by Fred and Elfrieda. In later years, William was to become president of the West Side Bank founded and headed until 1925 by his father. Fred stayed on with the brewery to inherit its presidency and make himself a symbol of the brewing industry in Milwaukee and everywhere Gettelman beer was consumed.
$1,000 Beer Introduced
It was Adam Gettelman, however, who started the famous “$1,000 Natural Process” on its way to the high esteem it enjoys today. In 1891, Gettelman advertising started carrying an offer of $1,000 to anyone able to prove that Gettelman’s premium beer was brewed with anything but pure malt, hops and water. This occurred in a day when the brewing industry in general was swinging to substitute ingredients. Chemists all over the country made a play for the $1,000 but, to this day, no one has ever been able to claim it.Also carrying the $1,000 reward was Gettelman’s “Hospital Tonic” introduced in 1892. Backed by the recommendation of the medical profession, the new tonic plummeted to popularity on the wings of its especial value to nursing mothers. The “Hospital Tonic” no longer graces the shelves of the nation’s drugstores — due, probably, to advent of scientifically prepared baby formulas and increased tempo of modern day existence.
Gettelman Spur Built
By the year 1895, Gettelman’s production had soared to the point where it was no longer feasible to haul the beer by wagon to the railroad situated on the shores of Lake Michigan. Accordingly, a spur from the Milwaukee Road mainline was run into the brewery yard. This was a momentous event in the life of the brewery, a milestone in its progress. It was no more than fitting, therefore, that the occasion be marked by a celebration of major proportions.And so it was. On April 13, 1895, a huge crowd gathered on the Gettelman grounds to watch Adam Gettelman drive the “golden” spike that would signal completion of the spur. While Hensler’s Juvenile Band spiritedly played “How Dry I Am” and the crowd cheered enthusiastically, Adam started pounding away at the spike. About half way through the operation, one of the on-lookers –William Starke by name — asking Adam to stop, placed a nickel on the flange of the rail so the imbedded spike might hold it there. “Here’s the nickel,” he said, “for a good glass of beer.”
As the last stroke of Adam Gettelman’s mallet was still ringing in the air, the first car was shunted into the siding. It was a beer car filled with official well-wishers from the Miller Brewing Company, two blocks away. Together, Gettelman officials, Miller officials and a hundred or so thirsty bystanders trouped into Gettelman’s bottle house to get down to some serious suds-slurping. The day was a decided success.
Lying between the turn of the century and the beginning of the Prohibition era were years of growth and development for the A. Gettelman Brewing Company. In the 50-odd years of its existence, Gettelman beer had become as much a part of the Milwaukee scene as its culinary counterpart wieners and sauerkraut — and as dear to the heart of every true Milwaukeean. In the face of an increasingly active market with that exacting taskmaster Production rapidly ascending to power, Adam Gettelman serenely guided his brewery along the path of quality brewing. While other breweries spread their supply lines to the four corners of the land, Adam was content with providing his Milwaukee friends with the kind of beer that smacked of the good old days.
Consequently, the little brewery on the old Watertown Plank Road never loomed as a Titan among others of its kind, nor does it to this day. But, in staying small, it retained the warmth and “family feeling” it had in the days when Magdelena Schweickhardt — later the bride of Adam Gettelman — served steaming hot ”vittles” to the brewery’s jovial worker-residents.
Despite the fact that the “drys” had tapped off most of the gemuetlichkeit from Gettelman’s satisfying old brew, the suds-sipping citizenry of Milwaukee remained loyal.
As if bowing out after he was assured of that fact, Adam Gettelman died in 1925. For the next four years, the affairs of the brewery were guided by Adam’s eldest son, William, who at the same time, succeeded his father as president of the West Side Bank which the latter had founded.
The cohesiveness and general esprit de corps with which Adam Gettelman, in his wisdom, had inoc ulated his company began paying real dividends with the coming of prohibition in 1919. While breweries made of blander stuff withered away under the arid provisions of the Eighteenth Amendment, Gettelman tightened its belt and turned its attention to the manufacture of “near beer” and malt syrup.
As in the case of every other brewery that lived through those trying times, Gettelman was compelled to cut back drastically on its working force. Brewmaster Julius Stemmler headed a crew consisting of Conrad Gieger, John Haertl, William Pust, William Dienberg and chief engineer Louis Gettelman. In those days, even the office force was not exempt from plant duty. It was not at all unusual for “Uncle” Charlie Schmidt, Fred Englehardt and Charlie Mollenhauer to don working clothes and pitch in when the brew reached the bottling stage. According to memoirs set down by Uncle Charlie, though, his biggest job was “to look out of the windows and count the number of automobiles passing by.”
While all this was going on, the driver’s seat of the brewery was occupied by three of the Gettelman clan — first Adam, then William, and in 1929, the rosy-cheeked Fred.
In almost every family circle there’s one child that stands apart from the others — not necessarily better or worse, but somehow different in a way that sometimes challenges description. Of all the children reared by Adam and Magdelana Gettelman in the big house on the hill overlooking the brewery, the cherubic Fritzy perhaps fitted that description more than any of the others. He shared in the heritage of good common sense handed down to him by his mother and father and their folks before them, but his had overtones of the dreamer. It was, however, flavored by a certain sharp inquisitiveness and compulsion to create that forced him to do something about his dreams rather than leave them in the air-castle stage. The same quality that caused an elastic band to appear one day on the screen doors of the Gettelman mansion so that they might shut of themselves, introduced to the beer-making world in later years the steel keg with the broad band around the middle for easy rolling. The idea for the steel keg came out of Fred’s dusty and venerable old “private engineering office” located in the building in which he had been born. It first saw light of day on a piece of “brown butcher paper,” Fred’s favorite method of putting his thoughts in tangible form. Shortly after Fred had promised exclusive manufacturing rights to L. R. Smith of the A. 0. Smith Corp., an Eastern firm offered him $1,000,000 for the same rights. But Fred had given his word and the Eastern representative went home with an unsigned contract. Manufacture of the steel barrels is now a major item on the A. 0. Smith schedule.
The spirit of not being quite satisfied with things as they were stayed with him the whole of his life. At seven Fred fitted the family baby buggy out with brakes and, with gravity as his engine, went whizzing down the decline from the house on the hill to the Watertown Plank Road far below. Much later in life he invented the Gettelman snow plow, pasteurizers for beer and milk, a washer that cleaned beer bottles with a jet of steam and a host of other things, many of which are still on brown butcher paper and will perhaps never get beyond that stage. He even played a major role in perfection of the huge glass-lined storage tanks for beer now a common sight on any brewery property.
But, though he owned as many patents as many a full-time inventor, dreaming up things to make life easier only occupied part of Fred’s time. There was a practical, everyday business side to him, too. He felt deeply his responsibility to the brewery and its employees. In a way, he had the toughest row to hoe of any of his predecessors. Not only was the brewery laboring under the yoke of prohibition, but the very year that Fred took up the reins — 1929 — the bottom fell out of things economically. There was indeed many a time during those black days that Fred’s indomitable will was the only light that pierced the darkness.
The years following repeal of Prohibition were, for Gettelman as for all of Milwaukee’s breweries, full of growth and development. The thirst of the true beer-drinker, never completely quenched by poor substitutes concocted in private cellars, sky rocketed the fortunes of the brewing industry to unprecedented heights.
But no situation, however favorable, is without its attendant dangers. With a public eager to drink anything under a brewer’s label the temptation was rife in brewing circles to cut corners on quality. Some breweries did just that and paid for their lack of foresight with extinction when the public’s first enthusiasm no longer beclouded its powers of discrimination.
Fred Gettelman, Sr., however, had piloted his brewery through the difficult days of depression and prohibition and he had no intention of jeopardizing everything he and his employees had worked so hard to preserve. Consequently, Gettelman beer, while not breaking any production records, held to the same fine quality upon which its pre-prohibition reputation had been built and the brewery came through safely.
The A. Gettelman Brewing Company first began to show signs of the new post-prohibition prosperity in 1937 with construction of an addition to the old bottle-house. An 80 x 110 foot structure, the building was twice the size of the building it annexed. Cream-colored bricks salvaged from the old Gettelman mansion atop the hill overlooking the brewery went into the construction of its walls and the bottling equipment it housed was modernity itself. In fact, Fritz Gettelman had had a hand in the improvement of the bottle washer installed in the new bottle house. It was he who had dreamed up and perfected the idea of cleaning the bottles with high pressure steam and water. So efficient was the equipment in the ultra modern bottle shop that Gettelman was able to show figures proving that breakage on bottles of all makes and ages ran only .442 per cent of total bottles handled.
In addition to the modern machinery on the ground floor the bottle shop boasted a battery of glass-lined storage tanks in the basement, an innovation which Fritz Gettelman had also helped engineer. During development of the revolutionary tanks, he had spent long hours at the A. 0. Smith plant subjecting experimental models to every conceivable torture to prove his idea that molten glass will stick to steel. How he did this in the face of skeptical college “enchineers” — as he called them –is another story, but the success he encountered is borne out by the fact that few progressive breweries today are without the big beer holders with the glazed walls.
All this while the affairs of the brewery had been directed from the office building which lies between State street and the brewery proper. By 1948, however, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the expanding brewery would need corresponding office facilities. It was decided, therefore, that an old malt-house which had, for the last several years, served as a place for miscellaneous storage be made over into an office building. Part of the building had originally been the first Gettelman homestead, antedating even the mansion on the hill. From what had once been its living room emerged the present office reception room whose walls are panelled with the cypress of the old wooden beer storage tanks. From the rest of the building the architect’s skill and a lot of hard work wrought the present Gettelman offices. Fritz Gettelman went along with, and indeed inaugurated, most of the brewery’s advances, but he turned a deaf ear to any suggestion that he move his office to the newly renovated building. Moreover, he insisted that the second story room in which he had been born and from which had come many of his ideas on the humble brown butcher paper be left inviolate — and so it has been, to this day.
Modernization of brewery and office facilities was approved by every one connected with the business, but no one sanctioned them more heartily than the two Gettelman brothers, Fred, Jr., and Tom, sons of the energetic and imaginative Fritz. Actively entering the management affairs of the brewery in 1939 and 1941, respectively, the two younger Gettelmans not only welcomed the changes but were, in large measure, responsible for their execution. Interest of the brothers in increased production and administrative efficiency was not an overnight affair. The lives of both of them had revolved around the brewery almost since they had taken their first steps and they had a working knowledge of every facet of the business long before they emerged from brewers’ school as master brewers.
As it turned out, the talents of the two men were so complementary that it seemed almost a part of some well-formulated long range plan. Fred found himself more at home in the operational end of the plant while Tom’s talents turned to the intangibles of the business — things like sales promotion, advertising and public relations.
It is in such capable hands that the destiny of the A. Gettelman Brewing Company rests. It seemed only in keeping with the spirit of Fred Gettelman, Sr. — all his life dedicated to the best interests of his business and the people in it — that, at his passing in June, 1954, he should have provided so well for his brewery’s future in the persons of his two sons.
New technological advances, widely expanded markets, an ever further propagation of the proud old Gettelman name — these are but a few of the things the two younger Gettelmans plan to make the A. Gettelman Brewing Company of the future an even better place with which to be associated than it has been in the past. To achieve these goals they look confidently to the same fine spirit of cooperation on the part of the Gettelman family of employees that has so importantly contributed to the high place the brewery now enjoys.
Today is John Maier’s 71st birthday. John had been the head brewer at Rogue Ales for as long as I can remember, though he more recently retired. He’s won countless awards, pioneered numerous new styles and been instrumental in the rise of the Pacific Northwest’s beer scene. Join me in wishing John a very happy birthday.
Today is the birthday of Henry Hoerl (April 26, 1854-November 14, 1917). He was born in Altdorf, in Bavaria, Germany, the son of a German brewery owner, where he learned the trade. When he was 24, he came to the U.S. and found employment with a number of breweries throughout New York. In 1892, he moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to become the Superintendent of the Val. Blatz Brewing Co. a position he held for the rest of his life.
Here is his obituary from the American Brewers’ Review:
This biography of Henry Hoerl is his entry from “Freemasonry in Wisconsin: Biographical Sketches of Men who Have Been Prominent in the Various Masonic Bodies in the State,” published in 1900.
And this biography is from “Memoirs of Milwaukee County: from the earliest historical times down to the present, including a genealogical and biographical record of representative families in Milwaukee County,” published by the Madison, Wisconsin Western Historical Society in 1909.
Henry Hoerl, for many years a prominent figure in the brewing circles of Milwaukee, has achieved his prominence through untiring energetic effort. He is of German descent and was born at Altdorf, Bavaria, Germany, April 26, 1854, the son of George and Anna (Funck) Hoerl, natives of the famous old city of Nuremberg. Henry, the subject of this review, received his education in the elementary schools of his native city and then took a course in the high school. After finishing his studies he was employed in breweries in Germany for several years. He served with distinction in the German army as sergeant of artillery of a Munich regiment. Ambitious to rise in the world and recognizing the greater possibilities and advantages offered in this country to young men of energy and determination, he left his home in 1878, when twenty-four years of age, and set out for the new world, entering upon a career in the course of which he encountered many disappointments, to ultimately reap the reward of honest efforts in abundant prosperity. Soon after landing in New York he found employment in the breweries there and took the brewmaster’s course in the New York Brewing Academy, winning the first prize in 1886. This brought him into prominence among the brewing men of the city and he secured an excellent position. In 1892 he moved to Milwaukee to become superintendent of the Valentine Blatz Brewing Company and has made their beer famous. On June 4, 1878, Mr. Hoerl married Katherine, the daughter of Michael and Katherine (Neuner) Strobel, of Albany, N. Y. Four children have come to bless this union: Emil, who is the proprietor of the Germania brewery of Altoona, Pa. ; Jenny, John M., who resides in Milwaukee, and Annie, the wife of George Schott, who runs a cooperage works in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mr. and Mrs. Hoerl are communicants of the Lutheran church, to which their ancestors have belonged for many generations. Mr. Hoerl is affiliated with the Masonic Order, having taken the Bine Lodge, the Chapter, Knights Templar and Consistory degrees, and he is also a member of the Mystic Shrine. Hoerl is a popular member of the Deutscher Club, the Millioki Club, the Milwaukee Music Vercin and the “West Side Turn Verein.”
And finally, I came upon this little oddity via eBay. It’s an invitation sent to Hoerl at the Val. Blatz Brewing Co. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The invitation was to attend a brewmaster’s convention of the United Brewer’s Association of the City of New York and the Surrounding Area, September 26-28, 1897. It doesn’t look like he mailed it back, but he may have been thinking about it, as he marked it for 2 train tickets to be reserved to get there.
Today is the birthday of John Thomas Toohey (April 26, 1839-May 5, 1903). He and his brother James bought the Darling Brewery in Melbourne, Australia, and eventually it became known as Tooheys Brewery.
This brief biography is from his Wikipedia page:
He was born in County Limerick to businessman Matthew Toohey and Honora Hall. His family migrated to Melbourne in 1841, where his father was involved in unsuccessful business dealings that eventually forced them to move to New South Wales in 1866. Toohey settled near Lismore, and around 1869 established a cordial factory. The following year he and his brother James began brewing at the Metropolitan Brewery; this would eventually lead to Tooheys Brewery, which the brothers ran. On 26 August 1871 Toohey married Sarah Doheny, with whom he had five children; he would later marry Annie Mary Murphy Egan, a widow, in New Zealand. In 1892 he was appointed to the New South Wales Legislative Council, where he was known as a supporter of Irish nationalism and as a prominent Catholic. In 1902 he embarked on a world tour, but he died in Chicago the following year.
And here’s part of their early history from the brewery’s Wikipedia page:
Tooheys dates from 1869, when John Thomas Toohey (an Irish immigrant to Melbourne) obtained his brewing licence. Toohey and his brother James Matthew ran pubs in Melbourne (The Limerick Arms and The Great Britain) before moving to Sydney in the 1860s. They commenced brewing Tooheys Black Old Ale in a brewery in the area of present-day Darling Harbour. By 1875, demand for their beer had soared and they established The Standard Brewery in inner-city Surry Hills. In 1902, the company went public as Tooheys Limited, and commenced brewing lager (the present-day Tooheys New) in 1930. In 1955, the brewery moved west to Lidcombe. In 1967, Tooheys bought competitor Miller’s Brewers located in Taverner’s Hill, closing that brewery in 1975.
This is a shared entry, with his brother John, of James Toohey from the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 6, 1976:
John Thomas Toohey (1839-1903) and James Matthew Toohey (1850-1895), brewers, were the sons of Matthew Toohey (d.1892), businessman, and his wife Honora (d.1878), née Hall. John Thomas was born on 26 April 1839 at Limerick, Ireland, and was taken to Melbourne by his parents in 1841. His father bought town lots and settled many Irish families in Victoria. One of the founders of the St Patrick’s Society in Melbourne, he was a political ally of (Sir) John O’Shanassy and (Sir) Charles Gavan Duffy. In the 1860s he was forced to sell at a loss; in 1866 he went to New South Wales and lived in virtual retirement. James Matthew was born on 18 March 1850 in Melbourne: he is said to have been named after Fr Matthew, the Irish apostle of temperance.
After unsuccessful business ventures in Victoria, New Zealand and Queensland, John settled near Lismore: later James had a property near Coonamble. About 1869 with W. G. Henfrey John set up an auctioneering agency and cordial manufacturing business in Castlereagh Street, Sydney; the next year the brothers began brewing at the Metropolitan Brewery and in 1873 they bought the Darling Brewery in Harbour Street. In 1876 they moved to new premises on the site of the old Albion Brewery in Elizabeth Street and began the Standard Brewery, employing twenty-six hands. Before 1880 imported beer was preferred to the local product, but in the 1880s Toohey’s and Tooth’s beers quickly became popular.
Vice-president of the Licensed Victuallers’ Association, in 1886 James was appointed to the royal commission on the excessive use of intoxicating drink, but withdrew when he felt the balance between local and anti-local optionists was upset. In evidence to the commission he said that ‘the system of shouting’ was the cause of all the excessive drinking in the colony and that beer was less injurious to health than ‘the ardent spirits’. He approved of the tied-house system and maintained that the 830 public houses in the Sydney metropolitan licensing district were not an excessive number, though there were a few too many in certain areas of the city.
Campaigning in 1885 for the Legislative Assembly seat of South Sydney, James claimed that the government’s action in sending troops to the Sudan ‘had resulted in a huge advertisement for the colony’. Favouring an elected Upper House, payment of members and the eight-hour system, he said he opposed local option and the abstinence party, as no Act of parliament could make a man sober. He represented the seat in 1885-93. A firm protectionist by 1887, he saw most free traders as ‘the curled darlings of the [Potts] Point and the merchants of Sydney’. He was a good speaker, if a little impetuous at times. According to the Sydney Morning Herald’s political correspondent in 1887, he ‘rolls the letter “r” beautifully, he drops his voice down to sweet whisper, lifts it up to a palpitating splendour, and then rolls it over the solemn path of prophetic parlance’. Dissatisfied with Sir George Dibbs’s administration, he opposed him for Tamworth in July 1894, but polled poorly. Next year he visited Ireland, England and Europe. James died at Pisa, Italy, on 25 September 1895 and was buried in the Catholic section of Rookwood cemetery, Sydney. He was survived by his wife Catherine (Kate) Magdalene (d.1913), née Ferris, whom he had married at Parramatta on 5 June 1873; they had four sons and eight daughters. Probate of his estate was sworn at £133,623.
On James’s death, John and James’s eldest son, also named John Thomas, took over the brewery. John was a leading Catholic layman, benefactor to numerous Catholic charitable institutions and a financial supporter of the Irish nationalist movement. On Christmas Day 1888 Cardinal Patrick Moran invested him as a knight of the Order of St Gregory. A leader in the Home Rule movement, he was prominent in the erection of the monument over the grave of Michael Dwyer in Waverley cemetery in 1898. Well known in business circles, he was a director of several companies including the City Mutual Fire Insurance Co. Ltd. He lived first at Moira, Burwood, and later at Innisfail, Wahroonga, and assisted in the development of both suburbs. He stood for Monaro in the Legislative Assembly in 1880 but was defeated by Henry Septimus Badgery and (Sir) Robert Lucas Tooth. In April 1892 he was nominated to the Legislative Council, but he very rarely spoke. In September 1901 he gave evidence to an assembly select committee on tied houses. Next year the brewery became a public company, Toohey’s Ltd, with John as chairman; the vendors received 375,000 fully paid shares and £175,000 cash. The well-known advertising slogan and symbol ‘Here’s to ‘ee’ originated in 1894.
For health reasons John went on a world tour with his family in 1902. He died suddenly in Chicago on 5 May 1903 and was buried in the Catholic section of Rookwood cemetery, Sydney. On 26 August 1871 at St Mary’s Cathedral he had married Sarah Doheny who died in 1891 survived by two sons and three daughters. Toohey was survived by his second wife, a widow Annie Mary Murphy, née Egan, whom he had married in Auckland, New Zealand. His estate was sworn for probate at £275,215.
And this is a commercial that Tooheys produced that tells some of the history of the brewery.
Weirdly, some yahoo at Toohey’s thinks that if you’re not 18 then you shouldn’t be able to watch a video about their history, which is just baffling. So go watch the video on YouTube until if, or when, they come to their senses.
Today is the birthday of Al Levy (April 25, 1860-March 24, 1941). He was born in Liverpool, England, but made his mark in Hollywood, California. He was a “notable L.A.-based Restauranteur, owner and operator of Al Levy’s Tavern in Hollywood and Al Levy’s Grill in Downtown L.A. in the 1930s and 40s. [He was also] credited with creating the Oyster Cocktail.”
This is how his carer began, according to the Jewish Museum of the American West:
Levy’s first job was at the Techau Tavern, a famous San Francisco restaurant, where he rose from errand boy, to dishwasher, to chef.
After opening two restaurants with partners who ran off with the money, Al Levy was advised to go to Los Angeles where the tempo was slower, and where there were no quality restaurants.
His first L.A. place was this pushcart, but it did well enough to establish himself and move to a permanent location, The Oyster House.
Eventually, Levy was able to open his Oyster House on Fifth and String Streets, later the site of the Alexandria Hotel.
His second and larger restaurant, located at Third and Main Streets, became a center of fashionable night life in 1906.
It was the finest such institution in Los Angeles. Each table had its own telephone, and the chandeliers were all of the finest crystal.
Al Levy’s restaurant consisted of four stories: the kitchen and main dining room were on the first floor; the second floor had booths for two, three, and four diners; the third floor had banquet rooms for smaller groups; the fourth floor had the large banquet/ballroom, and included the cart from which Al Levy had peddled oysters during his first years in Los Angeles.
But it was his third place, Al Levy’s Tavern, located at 1623 North Vine Street, that was his most famous, was huge during the heyday of old Hollywood.
Lots of famous people and celebrities spent time at Al Levy’s Tavern, it was, after all, “The Fun Center of Hollywood Life!”
The Daily Mirror has a great article about Levy and his legacy entitled Hollywood Heights: Al Levy’s Tavern Toasts 1930s Hollywood, by Mary Mallory.
