The Lemp Brewery Complex

The Lemp Brewery ceased beer production in 1920 due to the enactment of Prohibition. The gates were chained, and the buildings lay dark and silent for the first time in their history. In 1921, William Lemp Jr sold the rights and the recipe of Falstaff Beer to Papa Griesedieck, owner of the Consumer Brewery, for $20,000. The sale of Falstaff Beer was the final coffin nail for the Lemp Brewery, ensuring that beer would never again be brewed at the complex. When Congress repealed Prohibition, Papa Griesedieck renamed his brewery The Falstaff Corporation and brewed Falstaff Beer until the 1980s, when it went bankrupt and closed.

In the Summer of 1922, the International Shoe Company purchased the Lemp Brewery at auction for $588,500, equivalent to four cents on the dollar. The Lemp Brewery became one of the largest shoe manufacturing plants in the United States. After purchasing the Lemp Brewery, the International Shoe Company immediately went to work to erase the Lemp name from the complex. Luckily, they were unable to complete this task, and remnants of its Lemp history can still be seen today.

When Eisenhower passed the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, the initial proposed route of Interstate-55 was to run right through the brewery complex. In anticipation of this, the International Shoe Company began gradually ceasing shoe production at the Lemp Brewery. By the late 1960s, the brewery once again lay silent, dark, and nearly abandoned.

Some of the buildings shown in the photo no longer exist. The International Shoe Company tore down the Coal Shed and the Maintenance Buildings that sat along Broadway Street. If you walk through the graveled area that runs along Broadway, you can still see remnants of coal under the gravel. The International Shoe Company also tore down the anhydrous ammonia tank that supplied refrigerant for the Lemp Brewery's Fermentation Department and Stock Houses. Not shown in this photograph is the small warehouse built by the International Shoe Company in the 1950s, which sits near the intersection of Lemp Avenue and Broadway Street.

*Photo from the Missouri State Historical Archives.