Drewry's: the Canadian century of the Muessel ground, 1936–1972

1936 — 1972

The buyer: Drewry's began in Winnipeg, where Edward Drewry — who had come west from St. Paul in 1877 with the Red River Brewery — built the company the Belgen history of the Canadian trade calls Canada's first brewing company, founded 1877. By the 1930s its American arm, Drewrys Ltd. USA, sold Drewrys ale and beer brewed under license by Sterling Brewers of Evansville, Indiana. In 1936 it decided to brew in the United States itself, and the ground it bought was Christopher Muessel's. The nomination dates the transfer to a stockholders' meeting of August 1936, at which the Muessel company "was reorganized into Drewry's Limited" and "the Muessel brands were discontinued"; the public library's Local History account dates the sale itself to 1 October 1936. Both are printed — a reorganization voted in August and a sale closed on the first of October is one transaction told by its two records — and the fact is not in conflict at all: by the autumn of 1936 the Portage Avenue plant was Drewry's, and it stayed Drewry's for thirty-six years.

The plant at scale: What Drewry's made of the ground is the city's brewing at its largest. The South Bend plant became the company's first American brewery and its United States distribution headquarters; the work force was, in the nomination's phrase, fully unionized; and a Muessel man stood near its top — Clarence Budd, a Muessel executive, became Drewry's executive vice president, so the takeover kept the old firm's management inside the new one's offices. The plant brewed beyond its own label — Drewry's, and also Pfeiffer, Schmitt and Old Dutch, in the register-derived account — and the company's mid-century course ran through South Bend: it acquired Chicago's Atlas Brewing in 1951 and merged into Detroit's Associated Brewing Company in 1963. For production, this section prints the trade history's figure at its date: Brew Your Own magazine's history of the company gives South Bend's production in 1965 as 1.25 million barrels — twenty-five times the association's post-Repeal output, and the largest brewing figure in this city's record.

The close: The end came by sale and then by shutdown, and the sale's date is printed with its conflict. The nomination states that Drewry's sold the South Bend brewery to the G. Heileman Brewing Company in June 1972; the public library's Local History account dates the Heileman purchase to 1 August 1972. The two are printed side by side and not averaged; the sequence after either date is agreed. Brewing and bottling ceased that fall — the nomination: "the last cases of Drewry's beer left the brewery in November 1972" — and the plant closed with the loss of its work force, about 350 workers in the figure the Businesses section of this history carries, "more than 300" in the trade history's phrasing. Heileman never brewed there. The Portage Avenue ground had made beer, with the dry years' interruption, from 1865 to 1972 — 107 years — and it has made none since.

Sources:

1. National Register nomination, Muessel/Drewry's Brewery Historic District (2000) — the August 1936 stockholders' reorganization into Drewry's Limited and the discontinuance of the Muessel brands; the fully unionized plant; the June 1972 sale to G. Heileman; brewing and bottling ceasing that fall, the last cases leaving in November 1972.
2. St. Joseph County Public Library, Local History department (monon.org) — the sale dated 1 October 1936 and the Heileman purchase dated 1 August 1972, printed as the record's two dates; the South Bend plant as Drewry's first in the United States and its U.S. distribution headquarters; Clarence Budd's executive vice presidency; the Pfeiffer, Schmitt and Old Dutch production.
3. Brew Your Own magazine, history of Drewrys (byo.com) — Edward Drewry and the 1877 Winnipeg founding; the Sterling of Evansville licensed production to 1936; the Atlas Brewing acquisition of 1951 and the Associated Brewing merger of 1963; South Bend production of 1.25 million barrels in 1965; more than 300 jobs lost at the closing.
4. Businesses section of this history — the figure of about 350 workers at the brewery's end, and the plant's afterlife, printed in the next entry.