Sadly, due to the original design of the Lemp Brewery’s malt kiln, which was built in two building campaigns, one in the 1870s, and the other in the 1880s, which I wrote about in St. Louis Magazine, there will have to be necessary demolition of a third of the 1880s expansion.

Essentially, William J. Lemp Sr. built a three story building with three kilns, and then a decade or so later built three stories on top of it, creating two huge six story kilns flanking a service tower in the middle. As we all know, the western kiln collapsed catastrophically a few years ago. The Preservation Board, the Cultural Resources Staff of the City of St. Louis and the owner, Shashi Palamand came to the conclusion that the eastern kiln needs to be dissembled down to the original 1870s level for purposes of public safety and to save the rest of the building. I support this. In the future, when I win the Powerball jackpot, I promise to rebuild it, but for the time being, we need to save what can be saved.

You can read the Cultural Resource Office’s Recommendation here (at the bottom of the PDF), and the minutes from the meeting here (again, at the end of the PDF). Here is Shashi Palamand’s testimony to the Preservation Board; it goes a long way to explain just how much of a bind he was in with the malt kiln’s structural condition.