Brand: (
Satellite, the land for the last remnant is now occupied by Value City Furniture's parking lot)
M. Brand: (
Satellite, the buildings are still standing)
Michael Brand Brewery opened in 1878 and closed in 1955. [
chicagology] Brand Brewery opened in 1899. It produced 250,000 barrels per year, but it did not survive prohibition. [
CBSlocal]
These two breweries were across Elston from each other. Michael Brand became part of United States Beverage Co.
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Chicagology
[This photo is incorrectly included in a Michael Brand description.] |
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ForgottonChicago
The neighboring Home Depot parking lot provides a good view of the back of the former brewery, which once consisted of several more buildings located on the site of this parking lot.
[The smokestack has also been removed.] |
The green rectangle shows the still standing buildings of Michael Brand Brewery. Were the "yellow buildings" part of that brewery or some other industry? My current opinion is that they were another industry. The red rectangle shows Brand Brewery. Note that it was rail served back then with a small yard between the Brand buildings and the C&NW grade level industrial spur.
We can still see the slanted line of the industrial spur that went across Elston to serve the river-side industries.
In this oldest decent image from Google Earth, we can see the "yellow buildings" are already gone. And the "railyard" is now a storage area. Note the shadow of the smokestack.
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| Google Earth, Mar 1999 |
Home Depot's "big box" appears between Oct 2000 and this Mar 2002 image. The west side of Brand is gone, but the smokestack is still standing.
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| Google Earth, Mar 2002 |
This Mar 2012 image is the last one in which the Brand buildings were still standing. I include the west side of Home Depots property because, without the cloud, I noticed how the property line followed the right-of-way of an industrial spur. Note that the remaining Brand building still had its smokestack. So the ForgottenChicago photo above that does not have a smokestack must have been taken after Mar 2002, but...
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| Google Earth, Mar 2012 |
...before Apr 2013 because all of the buildings were gone by then.
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| Google Earth, Apr 2013 |
The interesting building east of M. Brand was blown away by the next image and replaced by yet another car dealer around Goose Island.
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Google Earth, Apr 2015
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Noticing that the car dealership is Lincoln, I'm reminded that most of the car dealerships I have seen in this area are for luxury cars. It must take a lot of money to gentrify an industrial area.
There was an attempt to save the edifice. I am certain a search will turn up archived World-Wide Web pages promoting that. But it faltered because somehow somebody actually began demolishing the building without a permit. (A permit may have been approved, but not for that specific address.) Work halted, but the remaining structure of the edifice was completely compromised, and the remainder of it had to be torn down.
ReplyDeleteIn June 1995, this brewery location, IINM, was the location of Ted Furman's Golden Prairie Brwg. Co. The Pep Boys store, the first in the City proper, had just opened and was offering deals on both automobile supplies and services. I took the 1987 Chevrolet Sprint into it for a tune-up because I intended to motor it to Baltimore, MD. for that year's American Homebrewers' Association National Homebrew Conference. The next day, when it was done, upon retrieving it I managed to find an unmetered parking space near the brewery address and went inside. (Because I had faxed it to inquire if it wanted to take part in our Annual Beer Tasting at the United Soccer Boosters' Convention in St. Louis, MO. that year.) Yes, Ted was there. Unfortunately for us, the brewery was not bottling. He let me look around.
I found a still usable loft staircase ascending to the 2nd floor. It had become a radiator service shop. (I scarfed a pad of paper with its company name atop. This may be in a box here somewhere.)
So you can likely find more data about this edifice by searching for it. Ted Furman is still alive {yes}, and brewing {hopefully}, so you can also ask him about this.