While St. Louis is well known as a beer-making city, of lesser renown are the numerous breweries which operated near St. Louis on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. These breweries were located in small towns like Trenton, New Athens, Highland, Mascoutah and Lebanon, as well as larger ones such as Alton, Granite City, East St. Louis, and Belleville. For over a decade in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, one of their products, Stag beer from Belleville, was the largest seller in the St. Louis metropolitan area, drowning out local St. Louis powerhouses Anheuser-Busch, Falstaff, and Griesedieck Brothers.

THE EARLY YEARS

Today, Belleville is a town of 45,000 located on the bluffs about ten miles southeast of St. Louis. German immigrants composed a sizable portion of the early settlers. Befitting this heritage, the town boasted eight active breweries in 1862.

The Fleischbein Brewery, built in 1829, was the first establishment of its industry in town. F. Fleishbein was the proprietor, and ran this company until about 1845 at the southwest corner of the public square.

Located on Mill and North 1st Street, the St. Clair Brewery was first owned by Fleischbein, and opened in 1845, apparently replacing his original plant. C. Cerini was a partner in this brewery in 1846, but the partnership was dissolved in October of that year and Fleischbein carried the business on by himself. Prior to its closing in 1851, Edward Fasbender joined Fleischbein as a partner. Many years later his son Charles Fasbender would be a figure with the Ulmer Brewery in Brooklyn, New York. The St. Clair Brewery went out of business, and was advertised as being up for auction in November, 1851. In 1862, the Belleville Weekly Advocate newspaper published a series of articles on Belleville history written by former Illinois Governor John Reynolds. According to this history, "the ale and beer of Belleville are known all over the West," and the following was said to be a "true and correct" table of the yearly production of the eight Belleville breweries:

The largest of these breweries, that owned by Simon Eimer, was known as the Washington Brewery. Eimer had built it in 1846-7, adjacent to his Eimer Hill Park and vineyard. The business prospered, the brewery gradually enlarged. Eimer opened a saloon at Main and Spring Streets in 1856, and by 1859 was selling enough beer to begin erecting a new brewery.

The 1862 article calls the Washington Brewery the largest in the Mississippi Valley. The facility covered about half a block fronting Richland Street between 2nd and 3rd. All brewery machinery was steam propelled and the beer cellars were two stories deep. Simon Eimer died in 1866. Tragedy again struck the family the next year when George Eimer, New Orleans agent for the brewery, died of yellow fever. He would be replaced by John Eimer, nephew of the brewery founder and later a prominent Belleville businessman. In 1873, the brewery was sold to Phillip Neu, formerly of the Western Brewery, (see following).

The John Klug Brewery, at West A and 2nd Street, was also called Klug’s Illinois Brewery. Proprietor John Klug was the first director of the Belleville fire company, a city alderman, and ran a bathhouse in addition to being a brewer. Klug’s Garden, which offered dramatic entertainment amongst its amenities, helped provide a market for Klug’s beer. This brewery, which opened about 1860 and closed a decade later, was reopened in 1873 by the aforementioned Phillip Neu. The Heberer brothers (Thomas, Henry and Adam) opened the City Park Brewery sometime in the 1850’s. In 1859 they completed construction of the City Park Theater as an adjunct to the brewery. Beer manufacturing continued at the corner of Richland and North 1st until June of 1865, when brewer Adam Heberer was arrested for evasion of revenue laws. The brewery was seized by the Federal Government and later sold at auction. While this brought an end to brewing, the theater was later refurbished and continued for many years. In 1895 it was sold to a brewer from St. Louis named Adolphus Busch. The Belleville Brewery, which was being run by Charles Schuchmann in 1862, had been founded in 1838 by Jacob Fleischbein. His relationship, if any, to the local industry founder, is unknown. This brewery was located on South 1st between Illinois Street and Spring. Jacob Fleischbein had immigrated from Germany, arriving in St. Louis in 1835, and establishing a brewery there. Three years later he moved to Belleville to start another brewery. He would soon sell out to Abraham Anderson and George Phillip Fein, going on to become proprietor of the National Hotel and Restaurant where he would sell beer until his death in 1856.

Anderson and Fein dissolved their partnership in 1847. In early 1850, Abraham Anderson reopened the brewery on his own. In 1854 the business was sold to Charles Schuchmann, who had operated as a cooper near the brewery. Schuchmann continued at the brewery for eight years, taking on a partner named Henry Fuhry before the pair sold the company back to Anderson.

A new brick addition to Anderson’s Belleville Brewery was completed in 1864. In December of 1866, Abraham Anderson retired as brewery head, and his son William became sole owner and operator, after his father’s death two months later. Just over a year later the business must have been in decline, for it was sold for $20,000 to prominent Bellevillian Edward Abend and others, and then shortly thereafter closed. In 1872, the body of William Anderson was found in an area river. His death was believed to be a suicide. William Captain Ehrhardt, who had at one time been a partner in the Stoelzle Brewery, ended up owning the Belleville Brewery. It was later sold at auction to a bank and then torn down in October of 1880 to make way for the new St. Clair County jail.

The Southern Brewery was established around 1860 by Frederick Priester and Matthew Villiger on the fourth block of South Charles Street. Priester later left to open a tavern, and Villiger ran the brewery himself through at least 1867. At some point the business quit making beer, with the final newspaper reference to it concerning a fire damaging the building in August, 1873.

One of the longer lived of the early Belleville breweries was the Stoelzle Brewery. Fidel Stoelzle was born in Germany in 1818, immigrating to the U. S. in 1846 and arriving in Belleville in 1850. He had learned the brewing trade in his native land, and had found work as foreman at the St. Clair Brewery of Fleischbein and Fasbender. Shortly thereafter, Stoelzle and partner John Gundlach established a new brewery at the corner of West Main Street and Race, (since renamed 3rd Street). The business prospered, and by 1862 the company was producing 3,500 barrels annually. In 1877, the Fidel Stoelzle Brewery suffered a fire. While only $400 worth of damage was done to the building, $1,000 worth of malt was water damaged. According to an 1881 history of St. Clair County, the brewery at that time was producing 6,000 to 7,000 barrels per annum, and had twelve employees. It was still being run by its founder, and sold beer in Belleville and neighboring communities. In 1884 Theodore Stoelzle returned to Belleville to take over management of the brewery from his father. The younger Stoelzle’s reign was to be short, however, for the brewery was closed in May of 1888. Fidel Stoelzle died the following month. In October the brewery property was sold to the Belleville Distillery for $12,000. Fidel Stoelzle’s former partner John Gundlach would later become owner of a brewery bearing his name just a few miles away, in Columbia, Illinois. Ironically, after the Gundlach Brewery closed, it was also sold to a distillery company.

After the Fidel Stoelzle brewery closed in 1888, only two breweries remained in Belleville. For whatever reasons, they happened to be the ones located farthest from the downtown area. These two had come to dominate the local business, and both of these facilities would distinguish themselves as time went by, surviving Prohibition and some decades after, before joining their departed Belleville brewing brothers.

THE RISE OF THE STAR BREWERY

The first of these was established around 1854 as the Neuhoff and Bressler Brewery. The original 60’ x 80’ three-story brick building was also called the Nebraska Brewery, owing to the "N" and "B" in the owner’s last names.

Ownership of this brewery changed hands several times during the next two decades, operating as Neuhoff and Loeser, and later as Loeser and Euchert. In 1868, Hubert Hartmann, a native of Hanover, Germany, who had been a success in the Belleville drug business, joined Charles Loeser as a partner in his brewing business. In 1872, Hartmann was joined by his brother Bernard, who bought out Loeser, giving birth to the Hartmann Brothers Brewery. Production around this time was about 6,000 barrels per year.

The 1870’s saw the company introduce its "Stern" brand, and the building placed on stilts for three months in order to expand the cellar. A new ice house was built in 1873, and by 1877 "Star" beer was so popular that the brewery began putting it in bottles.

By 1881 production was up to 25,000 barrels. The brewery buildings covered four acres of the twenty-five acre Hartmann estate, with some of the 30-40 employees living on the estate. Twelve teams of four-horse hitches were used to transport beer to St. Louis and surrounding Illinois and Missouri counties. Up to 2,000 cases of bottled beer left the brewery each day.

In the 1880’s, Bernard Hartmann acquired sole control of the operation, and renamed it the Star Brewery. It had always been called that because of the six-pointed star on the roof of the building, and the star symbol had been used on the brewery’s products since 1867. Hartmann was soon joined by his sons Hubert and Hans as the business continued to thrive.

Disaster struck the Star Brewery in 1895, when the main building was destroyed by an early morning fire. The 1,200 barrels of beer aging in the cellar were lost, but while brewing was interrupted, sales were not, as the company had beer stored throughout southern Illinois, and the bottling plant was undamaged. Within a year a new four-story plant had been built.

THE WESTERN BREWERY IS ESTABLISHED

In the meantime, across town in the western end of Belleville, a brewery had likewise flourished. Various dates in the 1850’s are given for the opening of a brewery started by Phillip Neu, and soon joined by Peter Gintz. While Stag beer in later years would advertise itself as having been brewed "since 1851," making it the oldest beer in town, this date is highly questionable. A Stag beer newspaper advertisement published in 1934, pronounces the founding date as 1857. An 1856 newspaper reference describes Neu building a new residence and brewery in the west end of town. The three story brick brewery building had a 40’ x 70’ malt cellar, a ten horsepower steam engine and a brewing capacity of 65 barrels a day.

In 1866, brewery partner Peter Gintz visited home in Germany and returned with his younger brother Adam. Sixteen year-old Adam Gintz had learned the cooper’s trade in Germany and found work in his brother’s brewery. When Peter Gintz died on January 3, 1873, a prolonged legal battle over control of the brewery broke out between Gintz’s heirs and Phillip Neu. While details of the litigation have been lost in the dustbin of history, on August 4, William Brandenburger, an ally of Adam Gintz, was somehow able to purchase the brewery for $35,000. The very next day, Neu, determined to continue in the beer business, purchased for $15,000 and then closed the Washington Brewery. Presumably he later moved equipment from that plant to the Klug’s Illinois Brewery, which had been inactive for three years before Neu bought it in October 1873. In December Neu resumed operations at that brewery and later took over as manger of Klug Gardens. Production at this brewery ceased after the death of 51 year old Phillip Neu on December 4, 1876, and the brewery was soon sold at a master’s sale. The Washington Brewery ended up being used as an engine works by the Harrison Machine Works company. In 1877, Adam Gintz finally was awarded his brother’s half of the Western Brewery, with Brandenburger and two other partners holding the rest.

In 1878 a disastrous fire struck, destroying several buildings. The cause of the blaze was arson, and one Henry Miller was later convicted of the crime, and sentenced to five years in jail.

The brewery was soon reconstructed. In February, 1881, Adam Gintz bought out his last remaining partner to become the brewery’s sole proprietor. In 1884, the business was incorporated as the Western Brewery Company, with Gintz as president. The next year saw a new ice house erected and annual production was nearing 25,000 barrels.

The early 1890’s saw the brewery begin more additions as production rose. The "Kaiser" brand was introduced and it would become the plant’s flagship brand. Adam Gintz retired a wealthy man from the Western Brewery in 1895, and the company was taken over by a group headed by William and Charles Jung, and Phillip Schaefer. During the next few years production increased to 40,000 barrels per year. A contract was signed with Dickman and Company, St. Louis liquor dealers, to sell 864,000 pint bottles a year for five years. Gintz later sold his stock in the company for $118,000. The turn of the century saw some big changes at the two growing Belleville breweries. The Star Brewery continued its expansion, taking out a $100,000 mortgage to finance a four-story addition and making arrangement for daily delivery of water via a railroad. In 1902, electricity replaced steam power at the brewery. Star was also to acquire the first telephone in Belleville.

Over at the Western Brewery, a new management team was put into place, with prominent local saloon keeper and banker William Bender, Jr., installed as vice president and general manager. Bender became an active promoter of company products, producing an advertising booklet and running ads and promotions for three newly introduced brands: Bohemian Malt Extract, Buffet Extra Bottle Beer, and Pilsner Keg Beer. Period newspaper ads cited distributors in Denver, Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Mobile, Meridian, and New Orleans.

Around this time the Western Brewery dug two 600’ deep wells, which were capable of producing continuous 6" streams of water. The wells were named the Kaiser Spring Wells, after the company’s leading label. While the Western Brewery was enjoying a period of prosperity, not everything was going its way. In 1901 they were sued by the William J. Lemp Brewing Company of St. Louis, because Western was using a ‘Lemp-like’ shield on their labels. Not surprisingly, the suit resulted with Western having to change their label and remove the offending shield.

In December 1902 further expansion and remodeling began at Western, and Bender negotiated a deal to sell four million bottles of beer for $360,000 to Reinholt Drug Company of St. Louis. One month later, Bender resigned to take a job at an Indianapolis brewery. Within the year he was back in town and active in the New Athens brewery.

Labor relations were not always smooth between management and the workers in the years following 1900. A brief worker’s strike had hit both Belleville breweries in 1902. The dispute involved adding the union label to containers. Fortunately, a compromise was quickly reached. Two years later came an engineer’s strike. In the same year of 1904, rumors began floating around town of a Chicago syndicate being interested in buying both breweries. This came to fruition in August 1905, when it was announced that a group of Chicagoans headed by George Burkhardt was acquiring the Western and Star breweries; the Consumer’s Brewery of St. Louis; and the Citizen’s Plate Ice and Cold Storage, located in Belleville. On August 15, 1905, a Belleville newspaper, The Daily Advocate, reported that "It is said...that the parties...are Eastern and Chicago industrialists, and the Griesedieck Brothers of St. Louis." The purchase price was reported to be over $2 million. The conglomeration was incorporated as the Belleville Breweries Company.

The syndicate was not long lived, however, for the Star Brewery was soon back in the control of the Hartmann family. In 1907 the brewery put Peerless beer back on the market, and also won a lawsuit concerning infringement on the "Star" trademark against the Hellgate Brewing Company of New York City. That same year rival Western Brewery held a contest to name a new brand of beer. Its leading brand was still "Kaiser," and with the growing unpopularity of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, that name would be dropped, replaced by a new beer with a new formula. The company would award a prize to the person selecting the new name. On March 8, 1907, a newspaper ad heralded the contest results:

IT’S THE STAG BEER

THAT IS THE NAME CHOSEN FOR OUR NEW PRODUCT AND GEORGE E. WULLER OF BELLEVILLE IS THE WINNER OF 25.00 IN GOLD. HEREAFTER,

WE EXPECT THAT STAG BEER WILL BE A HOUSEHOLD WORD, FOR IT IS THE NAME CHOSEN FOR THE BEST BEER EVER OFFERED IN THE BELLEVILLE MARKET.

The Western Brewery and Stag beer entered a new era in 1912, when on April 12 it was announced the facility was being purchased by a group headed by Henry L. Griesedieck, Sr., with Henry Jr. named company president, and "Papa" Joe Griesedieck, Vice-President. The Griesedieck family had been key figures in the Central Brewery in East St. Louis from 1901 through 1908, and had been rumored to be silent partners in Western for years. The Griesediecks’ opted to keep the Stag brand, and introduced a premium brand called "Continental." George Friedrich was appointed brewmaster, and the facility continued to expand.

In June, 1917, new bottling equipment was installed at the Western Brewery that could wash, sterilize, and fill 6,500 bottles per hour. Beer manufacturers were hoping that their products would be exempted from the rising tide of Prohibition. Soon, though, Western had the foresight to purchase dealcoholizing equipment. In September, 1919, despite facing the by then inevitability of Prohibition, the Western Brewery completed payment of a $250,000 bond, and the mortgage was burned at a ceremony in front of the county courthouse. Unfortunately, the production of real beer was about to become illegal. As the 18th Amendment became the law of the land, Western Brewery was producing 80,000 barrels annually, Star Brewery 55,000.