The Schoenhofen Brewery Historic District is centered around the former site of the Peter Schoenhofen Brewing Company at 18th and Canalport Avenue in the Pilsen neighborhood

Lower West Side, Chicago

Lower West Side located on the west side of Chicago, Illinois, is one of 77 well-defined Chicago community areas.-Government and infrastructure:The United States Postal Service operates the Pilsen Post Office at 1859 South Ashland Avenue....

 of Chicago, Illinois.

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

Brewery

A brewery is a dedicated building for the making of beer, though beer can be made at home, and has been for much of beer's history. A company which makes beer is called either a brewery or a brewing company....

 that collectively produced over 100 million gallons of beer per year. The Schoenhofen brewery building survived prohibition

Prohibition in the United States

Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban, as well as defining which...

 and competition from national brands, and is still used for bottling

Bottling line

Bottling lines are production lines that fill a product, generally a beverage, into bottles on a large scale.-Wine bottling process:The first step in bottling wine is depalletising, where the empty wine bottles are removed from the original pallet packaging delivered from the manufacturer, so that...

 beverages, although no longer beer

Beer

Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...

. 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.

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

Ornament (architecture)

In architecture and decorative art, ornament is a decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object. Large figurative elements such as monumental sculpture and their equivalents in decorative art are excluded from the term; most ornament does not include human figures, and if present they...

 of the late-Victorian era

Victorian architecture

The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...

. The powerhouse, constructed in 1902, is an example of second-generation "Chicago School

Chicago school (architecture)

Chicago's architecture is famous throughout the world and one style is referred to as the Chicago School. The style is also known as Commercial style. In the history of architecture, the Chicago School was a school of architects active in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century...

" architectural style, with ornamental brickwork

Brickwork

Brickwork is masonry produced by a bricklayer, using bricks and mortar to build up brick structures such as walls. Brickwork is also used to finish corners, door, and window openings, etc...

 at the columns between windows, and simplified brickwork at the window piers and the piers and spandrel

Spandrel

A spandrel, less often spandril or splaundrel, is the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure....

s.

The brewery district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

 on December 27, 1978 and the Administration Building and Powerhouse were later designated Chicago Landmark

Chicago Landmark

Chicago Landmark is a designation of the Mayor of Chicago and the Chicago City Council for historic buildings and other sites in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Listed sites are selected after meeting a combination of criteria, including historical, economic, architectural, artistic, cultural,...

s on July 13, 1988.

External links

• Chrucky, Serhii. History of the Schoenhofen Complex with illustrations