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Rainier Brewery
Seattle Landmark
Location	Seattle, Washington
Coordinates	47°36′13.380634″N 122°19′55.001405″W
Area	4.57 acres
Built	1888-1949
Architect	Hermann Steinmann Joseph Wohleb
Architectural style	Victorian Romanesque Revival Art deco

The Bay View Brewery also known as the Old Rainier Brewey is a historic complex of former brewery buildings located on the Western slope of Beacon Hill south of downtown Seattle. Built by Andrew Hemrich's Bay View Brewing Company, the core structures in the complex date back to the late 1880s, and are the oldest remaining brewery structures in the city, possibly even the oldest brick buildings still standing in the city. In 1893 a consolidation between Seattle's 3 leading breweries created the Seattle Brewing & Malting Company and the brewery became known as the Bay View branch. Numerous additions were made to the original buildings between 1888 and 1950. Now wedged between Interstate 5 and Airport Way, the brewery was once isolated, with most employees living on site, and only reachable by rail and by boat until the tidelands of Elliott Bay were filled in beginning in the early 20th century, a project greatly supported by Hemrich himself, which pushed the shoreline 1 mile out to the current Duwamish Waterway and allowing industrial development to flourish.

After a stint as a feed mill during Prohibition, the brewery was brought back to life by Emil Sick's Century Brewing Company where it initially produced Rheinlander Beer. A merger with the former Seattle Brewing & Malting Company now doing business in San Francisco as the Rainier Brewing Company would bring the production of the iconic beer back to the city in 1935. The brewery continued to expand over the next two decades, culminating in a towering new brew house where a neon "R" placed on the top of the building would become a landmark of the SODO neighborhood. After the brewery closed for the last time in 1999 the R would be replaced by a T when the building became headquarters for Tully's Coffee, who donated the original sign to the Museum of History and Industry. After their departure the complex sat vacant until redevelopment began to turn it into a business park and events center, painting the building in a rainbow of colors. A reproduction of the famous R sign was eventually reinstated to the building and restoration of the original brewery structures revealing their natural brick facades is ongoing.

History

The Bay View Brewing Company

1906 caricature of Andrew Hemrich

Andrew Hemrich (b. 31 Oct, 1856) began working at his family's brewery in Alma, Wisconsin at age 10 and would receive his education in the industry as a teenager at breweries in La Crosse and Milwaukee. At age 18 he struck out on his own, hitchhiking all the way to Montana where he tried his hand at prospecting in the Hecla Mining District in the Southwest corner of the state. He would soon open the Montana Brewery in the now ghost town of Glendale, later relocating to Bozeman where he became superintendent of the Bozeman Brewing Company. Feeling limited there after a few years he resigned and continued West to San Francisco. There he worked in a malting plant, where he perfected his knowledge of the brewery trade and decided that he would need to go North to make his own mark on the industry. He hopped on a windjammer for Seattle where he arrived in February 1883. At that point in time Seattle, which Hemrich noticed imported most of its beer from San Francisco, only had 2 small breweries in operation, a major one having recently been destroyed by fire, leaving an opening in the market.

With business partner John Kopp, Hemrich located a fresh water spring at the base of Beacon Hill south of downtown Seattle where he built his home and opened Kopp & Hemrich's Bay View Brewery on what was then the shores of Elliott Bay. At first it was a small operation, with a daily capacity of only half a barrel of what was known as steam beer, which Andrew would transport to town on a rowboat, carrying a barrel on his back to be sold at local saloons. They would officially incorporate as Hemrich & Company in 1883. That same year Seattle would annex the area from Atlantic Street to modern day Andover Street, giving the brewery future access to city utilities.

In 1884, the Puget Sound Shore Railroad completed their branch line between Tacoma and Seattle, which fortuitously passed directly in front of the Bay View brewery, where a spur was built and later a grain elevator. The Northern Pacific Railway, who had already chosen Tacoma over Seattle as their Western terminus, was initially unwilling to maintain the branch and service could be unreliable but it would later become their main line into Seattle and remain so until the mid 1900s when the tide flats were filled in and the tracks diverted to new rail yards on the west end. The former mainline would continue to serve as a spur to the brewery and their remnants can still be seen in the parking lot in front of the building today.

At Andrew's urging he was soon joined by father John Hemrich (1823-1896), brother John Jr. and brother-in-law Frederick Kirschner (1856-1897). John Sr. would buy out Kopp's interest in the company in 1884 and become treasurer, with Kirschner joining the following year as secretary. John Jr. would briefly operate a saloon on upper Front Street also known as the Bay View before becoming manager of the brewery's new bottling plant. The Hemrichs would soon be joined by competing breweries that began to spring up in the Duwamish Valley as early as 1884 and would even receive competition from their brothers Alvin and Louis, who after briefly working at the Bay View would open the Hemrich Brothers Brewery in South Lake Union by 1899.

the brewery near the turn of the century, Hemrich's family home is at left and the original 1888 brick building is just left of the smokestack.

Initially a collection of simple wooden buildings put up during the first year of business, in July 1888, Hemrich commissioned local German-American architect Hermann Steinmann to design the first brick building in the complex; a substantial 2-story structure that would be used as a brew house, engine house and boiler room. It was completed for $8,000 that year by pioneer bricklayer Henry Lohse and his team. With the new modern facilities they would switch from making steam beer to lager, with a new capacity of 30,000 barrels a year. This building, with its windows now bricked in and a 3rd story added, still stands just south of the current Factory Luxe event space. It is the oldest portion of the original brewery and, though not officially recognized, is the oldest brick building still standing in Seattle.

Further brick additions were made to the brewery in 1889 and 1892 by Lohse, replacing the remaining wooden structures and expanding the 1888 building south with storage and washing rooms and adding a parallel row of buildings to the West that contained offices, an ice plant, malt processing and the malt kiln. By 1890 the brewery employed around 18 people and soon a small company town known as Bay View would form around the site; Hemrich and Kirschner would have substantial Victorian homes built on the hillside just above the brewery in the early 1890s, as well as smaller homes and a duplex occupied by the foreman and various other employees. A company-owned saloon and boarding house were built on pilings over the mudflats that connected the brewery to the Grant Street plank road and later the Seattle Electric Company's street car viaduct that passed just off shore. The Bay View Brewing Company was officially incorporated in April 1891 with a capital stock of $300,000.

The Seattle Brewing & Malting Company

After several years of bitter competition resulting in money-losing price wars, the Bay View Brewery and its two main competitors, Claussen-Sweeney of Georgetown (founded 1884) and the Albert Braun Brewing Co. near Van Asselt (founded 1890) agreed to consolidate as the Seattle Brewing and Malting Co. in January 1893, with all 3 breweries remaining as branches. The merger would greatly reduce the cost of production and the savings could allegedly be passed on to the consumer. Andrew Hemrich would be named as president of the new company and Frederick Kirschner as treasurer. John Hemrich, Sr. would join the board of directors where he remained until his death in 1896.

By the turn of the century the Seattle Brewing and Malting Company would focus most of their growth on the Claussen & Sweeney brewery at Georgetown, that unlike the Bay View was located on level ground and not as restricted by geography and as a result it would rapidly expand to become the 6th largest brewery in the world. The Bay View complex would still receive several additions during the 1900s including a new steam plant featuring a 100' smokestack, a standalone bottling plant and several additional brick annexes. Expansion of the original brewery was mostly finished by 1906 and it would not see any more major improvements until after the repeal of prohibition.

In 1910, shortly after Andrew Hemrich's passing, the Bay View Brewery became the site of Seattle's first "Restricted District", where in an effort to regulate prostitution in the city's south end, a 240-room brothel was built on the hillside between the old Hemrich and Kirschner homes, where ladies of the night would be encouraged, but not forced, to take their business.

Prohibition

Prohibition was enacted in Washington state in 1916, 4 years ahead of the rest of the nation and the 18th amendment. Louis Hemrich would relocate the Seattle Brewing and Malting Company to San Francisco where he would rename it the Rainier Brewing Company and continue to brew their flagship beer until prohibition went nation wide, switching to non alcoholic alternatives afterwards. In Seattle they consolidated their remaining business at the Georgetown brewery and would retain that facility as a distribution center for their non-alcoholic products. The Bay View, now a surplus property, was closed and gutted of all its machinery, sitting vacant for several years before finding new life as a feed mill operated by Manley Harshman and R.B. Montague, who would name their operation the Bayview (sic) Milling Company after the former brewery. Harshman, one of Seattle's leading grain and flour brokers had opened Japan's first flour mill in 1906.

Century Brewing and Rheinlander Beer

Quickly following the repeal of prohibition the Bay View complex, still seen as a viable brewery site, was leased to the Century Brewing Association, an American branch of the Sick family's Canadian brewing empire based in Calgary, Alberta. Fred Sick, brother of Associated Brewers of Canada manager Emil Sick, would relocate to Seattle to oversee a complete overhaul and expansion of the old brewery during the summer of 1933. They would buy out the Bayview Milling Company's lease in exchange for stock in the company, who would relocate further up Airport Way. The buildings would be gutted and reinforced with concrete and steel and all given new roofs; the entire complex would be painted in white as a finishing touch to unify the buildings and mask decades of alterations. The new plant would have a capacity of 125,000 barrels a year and a storage capacity of 20,000, claimed to be the largest north of San Francisco. J.C. Donnelly was the plant's first general manager and in November of 1933 he would introduce the Bay View's new exclusive product, Rheinlander Beer. A massive neon sign advertising the beer would be installed on top of the building.

Seattle Brewing & Malting Mach II and the Return of Rainier

In May 1935 Century Brewing merged with the prodigal Rainier Brewing Company in San Francisco in a $2 million deal. The merger would see the revival of the Seattle Brewing & Malting Company name and the return of Rainier Beer production to Seattle. Emil Sick would assume his position as president with Rainier's Louis Hemrich becoming chairman of the board. The Bay View brewery would immediately undergo a $250,000 expansion with additional cellars, storage rooms and bottling facilities added to the south, increasing annual capacity to 250,000 barrels of Rainier, Rheinlander and another of Hemrich's brands, Tacoma beer.

The brewery at peak performance c. 1980

In 1948 Sick's commenced the biggest, and final expansion of the brewery. Under the direction of the Joseph Wohleb architectural firm of Olympia, Washington, new warehouses and loading docks were added to the south and the brewhouse was doubled in size with a 7-story concrete tower. Upon the Brewery's grand reopening in August 1949 an entire section of the P-I was dedicated to showing off the new facilities.

To celebrate Rainier's 75th anniversary in 1953 a new logo was designed, introducing the now iconic R. It was during this time that the 11' R sign was installed at the pinnacle of the brew house, initially lit by light bulbs, later replaced by neon tubing. The sign originally rotated 360° on it's perch, but after the completion of Interstate 5 directly beside it in the 1960s, the sign became a distraction to drivers and even the cause of several accidents and subsequently had to be fixed in place.

In June 1999 Stroh's announced that it would be selling most of its brands to Pabst, who that same year sold the Tumwater brewery to Miller. With Pabst having no intentions to operate in Seattle and no other breweries making offers on the property, layoff warnings were issued to the brewery's 230 employees. Brewing of Rainier beer was once again moved to California where it is still brewed to the current day.

Tully's

Tully's Headquarters in 2007

After receiving many offers for the site, Stroh's sold the shuttered brewery to the Benaroya Company in 1999 who proceeded to redevelop the buildings into office space. Tully's Coffee would sign on as the building's biggest tenant that October and on July 3, 2000 the iconic R was taken down and replaced by a 12' tall green T, manufactured by Western Neon. The original R was donated to the Museum of History and Industry where it was placed in the lobby with a display of vintage Rainier memorabilia. Ariel Development Inc. bought the complex from Benaroya for $5.793 million in July 2003 with plans to turn the space not used by Tully's into artist studios, rehearsal space, non-profit offices and other facilities.