Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Beer Distribution In Calumet (Red Jacket)

When I studied the Sanborn maps of Red Jacket from the late 1890's I noted a block of buildings all related to beer distribution and located along a rail spur.  These distributors were for the Miller, Blatz, Schlitz and Pabst breweries.  This seems like an ideal modeling opportunity.  Photos may exist of these buildings but I am not located near enough to the resources to do the digging so I will freelance these models.

The Miller Beer Depot has an ice house and a bottling house.  Barrel beer was shipped in and stored in the ice house.  It would then be distributed to local taverns or bottled for the 'family' trade.  By this time period the bottling and pasteurization of beer was an established practice, therefore I presume that local bottling was done to eliminate the back haul of empty bottles to the breweries in Milwaukee. 

Here is the completed model.  Note that it is minimally weathered as it represents an new building.






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