Falstaff Plant No. 10, Revisited

I love the old Falstaff Plant No. 10 over on Shenandoah, Lemp and Gravois. It sits forgotten, right in plain sight. I also find it sort of interesting the half dozen or more owners and names that have occupied these buildings (and earlier, demolished ones) on this site for over one hundred and fifty years….

Falstaff Plants No. 2 and 5, Revisited

Update: See the stretch of Gravois Avenue by Plant No. 2 in this post from May of 2020, including an historic picture of the brew house (sixth photo down). Otto Stifel’s old Union Brewery became Falstaff Plant No. 2, where the brewery continued to expand. Unfortunately, the central core of the plant, on the triangular…

Falstaff Plant No. 1, Revisited

Update: Six Row Brewing closed and has been replaced with Twisted Root Brewing. The old Forest Park Brewery, just west of Grand on Forest Park Avenue, became the center of the Falstaff rebirth. These original images from Alvin Griesedieck‘s book show that much of what was originally part of what was rechristened Falstaff Plant No….

Alvin Griesedieck Book on Falstaff Story

The Central Library has an extensive collection of rare books, many of which are extremely fragile due to age. But Special Collections also has books from the Twentieth Century that are in perfectly good condition, such as Alvin Griesedieck’s The Falstaff Story from 1951. Falstaff was still chugging along then, competing strongly with Anheuser-Busch, and expanding…

Rock Alva, the Griesedieck Estate

Update: As of 2024, the last remnants of the estate, except for the tower, have been demolished for a new housing development. I have become fascinated with the Griesedieck family, the “lost” brewing family of St. Louis. Everyone’s heard of the Busches and Lemps, but for much of the Twentieth Century, the three branches of…

Anton Griesedieck Grave, Bellefontaine Cemetery

There are several clusters of Griesedieck graves around Bellefontaine Cemetery, but the group around the grave of Anton Griesedieck is the most memorable. Made of gray granite, it features several interesting features, including the accompaniment of the thanatos, which is the inverted torch symbolizing an extinguished life. The portrait bust, holding up very well in…

The Old Stag Brewery’s Legacy, Belleville

Update: The building above, and possibly other portions of the brewery not already demolished in 1996, have now been destroyed sometime in between February 2014 and June 2019, when I returned to the site for a second time. The Adam Gintz House, the residence of the founder of the brewery, has also been callously demolished….

Bellefontaine Cemetery in the Snow

I went with some friends to Bellefontaine Cemetery, where I’ve been many times before, but cloaked in a shroud of snow, it took on a new level of beauty.  

Falstaff Brewery Plant Ten, Former Consumers/Griesedieck Brewery

Falstaff Brewery Plant Ten is a strange place, in that it has had numerous owners and brewers over the years. It’s actually sort of hard to tell how many it’s had. Also, I think many of the buildings around the brewhouse, once part of the brewery operation, are under different ownership than the main building….

Falstaff Brewery Plant Five, Former Columbia Brewery

Update: See the grave of the brewer of the Columbia Brewery here. Surely the former Columbia Brewery, later renamed Falstaff Brewery Plant Five, must have always dominated the St. Louis Place neighborhood. With the incredible amount of demolition in the area, it now rises out of what almost looks like a meadow, taller than the…