Schoenhofen Brewery Historic District
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The Schoenhofen Brewery Historic District is centered on the former site of the Peter Schoenhofen Brewing Company at 18th and Canalport Avenue in the Pilsen neighborhood of
Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
.


Schoenhofen Brewing

Beginning in the mid-1880s, Peter Schoenhofen was among a group of brewers in Chicago who transformed production methods and utilized expanding transportation options. By 1900, there were sixty Chicago breweries that collectively produced over 100 million gallons of beer per year. The Schoenhofen brewery building survived
prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcohol ...
and competition from national brands. Breweries, food factories, and stockyards dotted the Chicago area by the mid-20th century. The Schoenhofen Brewery was typical of the region, although enterprises were not located in the city center, but along the new rail lines. No mention is made of the artesian springs as the source of the Brewery's water suppl

"In the basement of the old brewery building is the only artesian well still in existence in the Chicago area. At 1600 feet deep the well is capable of producing one million gallons of water a day for the next 100 years." ( 2000


Overview

Seventeen buildings once occupied the site when the brewery reached maximum capacity in 1910 at 1,200,000 barrels a year. Two of the remaining buildings demonstrate the change in architectural styles that occurred at the turn of the century in the United States. The brewery's administration building was constructed in 1886, with ornate designs of the late-Victorian era. The powerhouse, constructed in 1902, is an example of second-generation " Chicago School" architectural style, with ornamental
brickwork Brickwork is masonry produced by a bricklayer, using bricks and mortar. Typically, rows of bricks called ''courses'' are laid on top of one another to build up a structure such as a brick wall. Bricks may be differentiated from blocks by si ...
at the columns between windows, and simplified brickwork at the window piers and the piers and
spandrel A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame; between the tops of two adjacent arches or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fill ...
s. The brewery district was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...
on December 27, 1978 and the Administration Building and Powerhouse were later designated Chicago Landmarks on July 13, 1988.


See also

* Green River (soft drink) *
National Register of Historic Places listings in West Side Chicago There are 69 sites in the National Register of Historic Places listings in West Side, Chicago, out of more than 350 listings in the City of Chicago. The West Side is defined for this article as the area north of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Cana ...
*
List of defunct breweries in the United States At the end of 2017, there were total 7,450 breweries in the United States, including 7,346 craft breweries subdivided into 2,594 brewpubs, 4,522 microbreweries, 230 regional craft breweries and 104 large/non-craft breweries. The following is a pa ...


In popular culture

In the 1980 movie ''
The Blues Brothers The Blues Brothers are an American blues and soul revivalist band founded in 1978 by comedians Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as part of a musical sketch on ''Saturday Night Live''. Belushi and Aykroyd fronted the band, in character, respecti ...
'', Jake and Elwood return to the orphanage where they were raised. The movie portrays the location as being in
Calumet City Calumet City ( ) is a city in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The population was 36,033 at the 2020 census, a decline of 2.7% from 37,042 in 2010. The ZIP code is 60409. Etymology The word ''Calumet'' is the Miꞌkmaq and French word for a ...
, but the external location was a facade constructed for the film in between two of the Schoenhofen Brewery buildings at the end of an alley that was once Normal Ave, north of W. 18th Street.


References


External links

*Chrucky, Serhii
History of the Schoenhofen Complex with illustrations
* {{Chicago Landmark districts Historic districts in Chicago Lower West Side, Chicago Chicago Landmarks Industrial buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Chicago Historic American Engineering Record in Chicago Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Illinois