The Braumeisters of Old Grand Rapids

Main Indexes

Alphabetical Index

Location Index

Detroit Breweries Index

Master Items Index

U-Permit Number List

Other Features

Search MBO

Links Page

Guestbook

This article was originally published in the Grand River Valley Review Vol. VIII, Number. 1

It later appeared in the Fall 1991 edition of NABA's
The Breweriana Collector magazine

All brewery photos & portraits, unless otherwise noted, compliments of Dr. Wilhelm W. Seeger, The Grand Rapids Public Museum, or the Michigan Room of the Grand Rapids Public Library. Dr. Seeger also wishes to thank Gordon Olson, The Grand Rapids City Historian for his help.

A separate bottling plant came next, and on August 17, 1907, a large advertisement in the Grand Rapids Evening Press proudly carried the headline, "After a Year's Work at a Cost of $100,000 the New Bottling Plant of the Grand Rapids Brewing Company Is Completed. Visitors Are Invited." Accompanying the advertisement's detailed description of the new facilities and the measures taken to insure cleanliness and sanitation at the plant were a number of photographs of the new bottling machinery. The advertisement also boasted: "Every piece of machinery employed is new absolutely and it may in all fairness be stated that no other plant in America combines all the features in modern bottling machinery that can be seen at work in this one building."

As the industry continued to grow, the workers unionized. The establishment of the Brewers Workingmen's Union, No. 10, in the 1890s was followed by the organization of the Beer Bottlers and Bottle Wagon Drivers Local 254. The Brewers Union met twice a month in the Central Labor Union Hall, and the German names that dominated its roster of officeholders reflected German predominance in the industry as a whole.

By 1900, Grand Rapids had a sizable German- American population. Citizens of German origin were by then the city's third largest ethnic group, outnumbered only by the Dutch and Poles. Although the greatest number of German immigrants had arrived between 1880 and 1895, immigration from Germany continued until the outbreak of World War 1. In 1912 there were about twenty-one German-American societies in the city, each with its own yearly calendar of official and social functions calling for the products of the brewer's art to provide the proper Gemütlichkeit for the occasion. The Grand Rapids Brewing Company, with its large modern facility and a growing market for its products in Grand Rapids and throughout western Michigan, had little to fear from outside competitors.

Theatre Program Ad from 1909

< [Page 9] [Home] [Page 11] >

Revised: December 30, 2006