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Maryland Historical Society
Library of Maryland History
201 W. Monument Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
Phone: 410-685-3750
Fax: 410-385-2105
E-mail: library @mdhs.org
Baltimore Architecture:
Then and Now
American Brewery, 1700 North Gay Street
image info
Architect:The land on which this building stands was until the Civil War a portion of "Greenwood," the country seat of Philip Rogers and his family. In 1864 a Bavarian immigrant, John F. Weissner (1831-1897), leased it from the Rogers heirs and built a small brewery and his family home there. In 1886, with German beer drinkers flooding into Baltimore in general, and this part of it in particular, Weissner commissioned builder Charles Stoll to construct the five-story brick brewhouse which still looms over Gay Street today. Its tower served as a 10,000-bushel grain elevator, with the actual brewing done on the third, fourth, and fifth floors of the brewhouse and loading docks taking up the first and second stories. Beer, originally sold only by the keg, began to be bottled at the plant in the 1890s, and for this the founder's successor John F. Weissner, Jr. (1859-1906) added a separate bottling plant east of the brewhouse, as well as extensive stabling for the enormous number of draft horses the Weissners employed to deliver their products around the city. Not until 1909 was any Weissner beer delivered by truck.
1887 Charles StollLike all breweries, this one closed on the passage of the Volstead Act, and the Weissner family sold it to the American Malt Company in 1931. American Malt made malt there from 1931 to 1933. With the end of Prohibition, the Fitzsimmon family turned it into the American brewery, thereafter operating both businesses in tandem from the plant.
The steady consolidation of the American brewing industry after World War II eventually spelled the end of all Baltimore breweries - the Fitzsimmons closed this one in 1973. Repeated efforts to find a new use for the complex have proven unsuccessful, and the buildings have stood unused since the 1970s.
Image information
left: 1700 N. Gay Street, J.F. Weissner and Sons Brewery, ca. 1915 (MC7104, MdHS/BCLM Photograph Collection).
right: Photo by John Orrick, 2000.Baltimore Architecture - Homepage
Site Contents
1 Masonic Building
2 Enoch Pratt House
3 Graham-Hughes Home
4 American Brewery
5 Belvedere Hotel
6 Camden Station
7 Alex Brown Building
8 Williams-Small House
9 Timanus Mill
10 The Pembroke Apartments
11 Merchant's Exchange
12 Old B and O Building
13 Denny & Mitchell Building
14 Guardian Trust Building
15 Old Post Office Building
16 St. Joseph's R.C. Church & Washington Firehouse
17 The Maryland Casualty Building
18 Church of the Redeemer Building
19 The Popplein Family Mansion/Marlborough Apartments
20 Samuel Hoffman, later the Dr. William Osler Mansion
21 Cohen Brothers, later the Dr. Robinson Building
22 Saint Peter's Catholic Church 1770
23 The Baltimore Humane Impartial Society Building
24 Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad Calvert Station
25 The Richmond Market Building Site
26 Dr. Charles Howard's Site and Mount Vernon Place M.E. Church
27 The Stephen Broadbent Mansion "The Glen Mary"