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More output led to the need for additional storage space, and the purchase of an old
school building for that purpose in 1908 prompted the Grand Rapids Herald to remind its readers: "Its [the school's]
location has also been the source of a long standing pun. On one corner was the school, on
another was a church, while on a third was a saloon. In consequence of this combination
the saying has grown that on three corners were located education, salvation and
damnation."
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Despite its size, the Grand
Rapids Brewing Company did not have a monopoly on the local brewing industry. And in
1904 a new competitor emerged on the local scene. According to the Grand Rapids Evening
Press, Elias Aberle, a Detroit promoter who had organized breweries in a number of Michigan and Ohio cities, including Detroit,
Port Huron, Lansing, Battle Creek, Toledo, Youngstown and Columbus, was behind the
organization of the new Furniture
City Brewing Company in Grand Rapids. Forty of the 137 shareholders were saloon owners
who would provide an outlet for the brewery's products. Chosen to head the new enterprise
were C.F. Young, president; John A. DeYoung and L. N. Hodges, vice presidents; and P. H.
O'Brien, secretary and treasurer. The absence of German names among the Furniture City
Brewing Company's officers was a harbinger of things to come in an industry that was once
but would one day no longer be - a predominantly German-American enterprise. |
Furniture City Ad c1909 |
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By June 1904 a water well had been drilled on the brewery site at
Wealthy and Ionia. Plans for the buildings were developed, and the Furniture City Brewing Company
hoped to begin marketing its product in February of 1905. The company was the last local
brewery to open its doors in Grand Rapids before the nationwide victory of the temperance
movement ushered in fourteen years of Prohibition and sounded the death knell for
breweries all over the United States.
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