Today we are going to go back in time to look at what was once Cleveland’s largest independent brewery, Leisy’s.
Isaac Leisy had already convinced his father and two brothers that brewing beer on a larger scale was their future after returning to the United States from Germany after briefly working at a brewery in Durkheim, Germany. Even though several members of the family were brewers by trade, it took Isaac’s vision to convince them to take it to the next level.
The History of Leisy Brewing Co.
Leisy’s was founded in 1873 by Isaac Leisy and those two brothers, John and Rudolph, after leaving their small brewing operation in lowa for 3400 Vega Avenue in Cleveland, purchasing Frederick Haltnorth’s brewery for $120,000.
Here is something we did not know but found very interesting about the beers that brought Leisy’s instant success. Their Premium Lager and Budweiser beers established them as a brewing force to be reckoned with. Within a year of coming into being in Cleveland, they became the largest brewery in the city. Saloons all over town were bought out to help protect their strong sales trends. By the time Prohibition began in 1920, Leisy’s owned and operated over two hundred local establishments to protect their consistent sales and distribution.
(Budweiser, you say? How can that be? Well, when Leisy’s began their brewing empire, Budweiser was not yet an established brand name, just a beer style.)
Leisy bought out his two brothers in 1882. Perhaps the move was necessary because Frederick Leisy seized the opportunity to expand the brewery into not only more modern facilities but enhanced brewing capacities over a 17-year period, peaking at 90,000 barrels in 1890.
The plant’s workers were mostly German-Americans who had also come to Cleveland seeking a better life for their families.
Frederick passed away in 1892 and his son Otto assumed the leadership role for Leisy’s through his death in 1914, which passed leadership to his son Herbert just prior to the Prohibition years.
At first, Leisy remained open, expanding their current limited non-alcoholic offerings to include root beer, soda, orangeade, and ginger ale. These efforts were not enough to keep the company afloat, and the brewery closed in 1923 selling off all of their equipment. Leisy’s did not return to production until Prohibition ended in 1933.
Herbert, with help from the elder statesmen of brewers at the time, Carl Faller, reestablished Leisy’s brewing operations with modernized equipment and other brewing facilities in 1933. Consolidation became the biggest adversary to the survival of the smaller, independent breweries that had hoped to reestablish their operations after Prohibition.
Even Leisy’s, with their name recognition, was not immune to the new challenges faced by their industry, and despite all their best efforts, also fell to the new pressures. They ceased operations in 1958 and their facilities were brought down in the 70s.
What we found most interesting in our Leisy’s research was how they managed to keep their produced product cold prior to the beginning of actual refrigeration. The basement of the brewery, the rathskeller, was 50 feet below the surface of the brewery. It became a very popular gathering spot for social functions and club activities, complete with an operating bar and kitchen. The area remained popular even as Leisy’s moved toward implementing more modern refrigeration methods.
(Image source: Cleveland Memory Project, Cleveland State University Library Special Collections)