John Gund Brewing Company
The John Gund Brewing Company is a former American brewery in La Crosse, Wisconsin . It was founded in 1872 by John Gund under the name Empire Brewery and closed in 1920.
history
The German emigrant John Gund sold his shares in the G. Heileman Brewing Company in 1872 to set up his own company. With the proceeds he built the Empire Brewery on South Avenue in La Crosse, consisting of the main building, brewery, cold store, malt house, machine house and bottling plant. In 1880 a second cold store was completed. The brewery's capacity was 30,000 barrels per year.
On May 1, 1880, the brewery was officially incorporated as the John Gund Brewing Company with an initial capital of $ 100,000. Senior executives were John Gund (President), George Gund (Sales Agent), and John Gund, Jr. (Accountant). Henry Gund moved to Minneapolis in 1882 to manage the local distribution center. He returned in 1887 after John Jr. had left the company and took over the position. Business went so well that the production facilities continued to expand. In 1897 the annual capacity was 60,000 barrels and the brewery had grown to five acres . Gund beer was distributed in Wisconsin and Dakota , Iowa , Illinois , Minnesota and Nebraska .
On September 23, 1897, a fire destroyed the entire brewery except for the machine house. It was still possible to get enough beer from the cold stores to meet the current orders. The damage was estimated at $ 200,000, of which 125,000 was covered by insurance.
The very next day, John Gund began rebuilding the brewery. It was planned by the architect Louis Lehle , who had already designed buildings for Blatz and Schlitz . On August 16, 1898, the John Gund Brewery was rebuilt. The complete fresh start made the brewery one of the most modern of its time in the USA. The switch to bottled beer, the fully automatic washing and filling systems and the pasteurization process helped the company to achieve a rapid upswing.
By 1904, the John Gund Brewing Company's capital stock had grown to $ 2 million. Henry Gund was meanwhile vice president and treasurer, Carl Kurtenacker was secretary and general manager. John Gund died on May 7, 1910, and his son Henry became the new president.
The Gund Brewery was one of the largest breweries in the northwestern United States . The Gund's Peerless brand won awards at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904. The success was also reflected in company figures: In 1910, the Gund Brewery employed 450 people. Over 600,000 barrels of beer were produced that same year.
With the beginning of Prohibition , the John Gund Brewing Company had to close. Due to an exception, a low-alcohol "war beer" with a content of 2.3–4% was produced for another year. A strike by the Brewery Worker's Union and the prohibition of the war beer finally spelled the end of the brewery. The Gund family left La Crosse.
The brewery was sold piece by piece in the decades that followed. Nowadays only the bottling house, which was entered on the National Register of Historic Places, remains .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Steven Michael Baier (1976): History of the Brewing Industry in La Crosse Available online at the Murphy Library of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse ( Memento of the original from September 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English), accessed June 22, 2013
- ↑ a b c d Jim Draeger, Mark Speltz: Bottoms Up: A Toast to Wisconsin's Historic Bars and Breweries , pp. 118–119 Available online on Google Books , accessed June 22, 2013
