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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.

      The Grand Rapids Press of April 27, 1918, described the Grand Rapids Brewing Company's final hours as a manufacturer of alcoholic beverages:

     Officials of the Grand Rapids Brewing Company announced Saturday that their plant would close permanently Saturday night at 6 o'clock as a malt or spirituous manufactory. Telephones at the brewery were buzzing merrily all day Saturday, but its last pint of beer was sold early in the day and orders for more than 1,000 dozens were refused. "Our stock is all gone and we're through for good," said President G. Adolph Kusterer at noon. The company will make soft drinks.

     On the west side of Grand Rapids, the Petersen Brewing Company had formed a firm called the Petersen Beverage Company for the purpose of producing a new temperance drink called "Vita." According to an article in the Press at the time: The company believes it has succeeded in producing a cereal beverage that will fill a long felt want for a healthful formula with a percentage of alcohol so small as to come within Uncle Sam's specifications for soft drinks. ( 12 )

     The Furniture City Brewing Company also entered the "near beer" market with a product called "Nu Bru."

Grand Rapids Products Silver Foam

Furniture City Nu-Bru

Here are two of the " near beers" produced at the onset of Michigan's Prohibition

The 1920s saw the former breweries divesting themselves of much of their property. The Grand Rapids Brewing Company sold its three story brick building on Ellsworth and Market to Henry L. Adzit in 1920, and the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, which owned $325,000 worth of real estate in Grand Rapids when Michigan went dry, sold the last of its holdings to Rice Veneer and Lumber Company in 1923. In 1929 the George E. Ellis estate foreclosed on the Furniture City Brewing Company's property mortgage. The brewers had fallen on hard times and many of them would never recover.

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Revised: December 30, 2006