HORNELL - Blame the Volstead Act.

Or blame the intrinsic economic challenge of operating a small brewery 30 years before it became fashionable.

Whatever the cause of death, the fact remains unchanged: Once upon a time, Hornell was home to a brewery that, with fond remembrance, has achieved near-legendary status here.

The names are redolent with nostalgia: Schwarzenbach Lager. Crystal ale. Old Ranger. Hornell Beer. KDK ale.

All gone, save for the memories of those who fondly remember the beer whose exquisite taste was said to spring from the crystal pure Old Ranger Spring - the same one that saved Hornell in 1935 after the great flood that year contaminated city water supplies.

The end came in 1963 when the brewery, then owned by the Metropolis Brewery Co. of Trenton, N.J., was closed down and 40 workers lost their jobs. Metropolis, which had owned the Hornell brewery for about three years, then continued to produce Hornell and Old Ranger beer - but at its other facilities.

And yet, though the building that once held the Schwarzenbach and Hornell breweries has long since been reduced to dust, the Hornell Brewing Co. lives on: The name of Hornell Brewing Co. was purchased in 1992 by a company now based in Long Island, and sells name-brand products made and bottled by other companies under its corporate name.

The story actually begins in Bavaria, with Joseph Schwarzenbach. He came to the United States in 1851, where he cut the marble columns of the Capitol building and the U.S. Post Office building in Washington D.C., before joining a German colony in - appropriately - Germania, Pa.

Schwarzenbach and a brother opened their first brewery in Germania in 1857. The brothers eventually dissolved their partnership, but Joseph Schwarzenbach continued his Germania brewery until his death in 1891. His sons, Roland Herman August and James Schwarzenbach expanded their father's operation, opening new breweries in Hornell in 1895 and Galeton, Pa., five years later.

Of the two sons, it was James Schwarzenbach who made his legacy here. He was an early advocate of the automobile; today, a memorial in his name sits along State Route 21, near Loon Lake. Schwarzenbach served several terms as a Democratic state assemblyman.

James Schwarzenbach died in 1927, but the first nail in his coffin might well have been the Volstead Act of 1919, which ushered in Prohibition. The Hornell brewery actually closed down for a time as the company tried to retool and make sterilized apple juice and cider. They did not catch on, and the business was closed.

Prohibition was repealed in 1933. By that time, both Joseph and Michael Schwarzenbach were dead, and their Hornell plant had sat empty. The Hornell Brewing Co. was formed, and acquired the plant - a move which ushered in a second golden age of locally produced beer and ale.

It was then that Old Ranger beer was introduced, as well as Hornell Beer and KDK ale (named for the owners of the firm, Kingston, Day and Kilbert).

The company always pointed to the Old Ranger Spring - which flowed into a well - as the source of its brewed greatness.

Again and again, tests of the spring water proved its claim of purity; a 1912 sampling of the spring water by a Chicago-based firm for the Schwarzenbach Brewery upheld its status, while a full-page advertisement in the 1951 centennial edition of The Evening Tribune took great pains to describe how the "naturally soft" water of the spring was responsible for the quality of the beers and ales.

Even at the end, as city officials and managers for the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad scrambled in vain to keep the brewery open in 1963, Metropolis Brewery president Ben Hertzberg maintained tests showed the beer made in Hornell to be of the finest quality available.

That was small solace, however. The brewery was losing too much money to remain open.

After the Hornell plant was closed, the building was purchased at public auction by the late Clarence Pfeil, and later was occupied by a company called Dynamic Components. In the summer of 1978, it was razed as part of federal Urban Renewal.

Gone, but not forgotten. Memorabilia produced by both the Schwarzenbach and Hornell breweries have become collector's items; ranging from old "blob top" beer bottles of the 1890s to advertising signs and beer trays.

The Hornell Brewing Co. of today bears little resemblance to its historic predecessor.

There is no Hornell Brewing physical plant producing beverages, according to company spokeswoman Francie Patton; instead, it pays other companies to make and bottle such products as Midnight Dragon malt liquor, Mississippi Mud Black & Tan Beer, Mississippi Mud Lager . . . and non-alcoholic products like tea and ready-to-drink coffee.

The company was recently in the news when a settlement was reached by SBC Holdings (formerly the Stroh Brewing Co.) with Native Americans over the marketing of Crazy Horse malt liquor.

Hornell Brewing is being sued for using the name of Crazy Horse - an Ogala Sioux warrior who led the massacre of Lt. Col. George Custer and his troops in 1876 - without permission to continue selling the malt liquor. Hornell Brewing was under contract with Heileman - subsequently bought by SBC Holdings - to bottle the drink.