The Farmer's Brewery

In 1913, a group of six German farmers organized the Farmers’ Brewing Company, which produced “Farmers Lager Beer” and later “Shawano Club.” To make brewing more efficient and economical, brewmaster Conrad Volland adopted special industrial designs that brewery architects in St. Louis and Chicago developed between the late 1870s and 1890. An organization of space along a vertical axis placed the water tanks, malt hopper, mash tub, brew kettle, and other equipment in a gravity-flow system. As the brewer introduced the water, malt, and hops at the top of the structure, the concoction flowed downward. In the final stages, the brewers transferred the beer to fermenting and lagering rooms.

The Farmers’ Brewing Company Building exemplifies this spatial plan. At the top of the six-story tower was the primary tank, where the brewer created the wort. A brass cooling system stretched down from the fourth floor to a giant copper brewing kettle on the second. On that second floor stood six enormous stock tubs, with the first floor housing rows of fermenting tubs and seven huge storage tanks. Each of those tanks held the equivalent of 73 barrels of beer.

The unknown builder constructed this building of cream brick in a Romanesque Revival style, specifically resembling the older Raddant Brewery that stood nearby on Fifth Street. A row of round-arch windows wraps around the top of the tower where the brewing process began.

Several ancillary structures were also part of the brewery’s operations. Attached to the west is a one-story, brick keg house. This hyphen connects to a two-story storage area and engine house, which a pipe line connected to the two-story bottling works across the alley. The brick bottling-works features a stepped parapet and segmentally arched windows.