Gunther Brewing Company

Gunther Brewing Company is a historic brewery, and industrial building complex, located in the Canton neighborhood of southeast Baltimore, Maryland, (United States).

Gunther Brewing Company
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
South wall of the old Gunther Brewery in Canton, southeast Baltimore, November 2011
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Location	1200,1211,1301 South Conkling Street, 3601,3701 O'Donnell Street, east side South Conkling Street, Rear east side of South Conkling Street, Canton, Baltimore, Maryland
Coordinates	39°16′46.2″N 76°34′0.14″W
Built	1900
Architectural style	Romanesque, Moderne, et al.
NRHP reference No.	02001607 [1]
Added to NRHP	December 26, 2002

History

The Gunther Brewing Company was a Baltimore brewery founded by George Gunther Sr. and his son, George Gunther Jr. The elder Gunther, born in Wirtheim, Germany, immigrated to the United States in 1866 and applied his brewing skills first in New York. In 1870, he moved to Baltimore to serve as brewmaster for the Gehl Brewery, which he took control of in 1880 to create his own business at Conkling and Dillon Streets.

In 1899, Gunther Sr. sold his business of 20 years to the Maryland Brewing Company, a syndicate that was consolidating many of the city's breweries into a "brewing trust". While Gunther Sr. could not contractually compete with the trust, his son was under no such restriction, and the Gunther's took advantage of the loophole. In 1900, George Gunther Jr. founded a new, independent brewery directly across the street from his father's original plant. The trust filed a lawsuit to stop the new venture, but the case was unsuccessful. During this period, Gunther Sr. was president of the same trust that was suing his son, a conflict the courts ultimately ruled in Gunther's favor.

The new brewery, sometimes spelled "Guenther" in its early days, was designed by Philadelphia architect Otto C. Wolf as a state-of-the-art model brewery. The complex consisted of 15 buildings constructed with modern materials like granite foundations and pressed brick. Its centerpiece was the five-story Romanesque brewhouse, a prominent landmark in the Canton neighborhood. With a goal to produce a clean, high-quality beer comparable to German imports, the company did well. By 1959, it was the second largest brewery in Baltimore, one of the major centers of brewing in America, and the Gunther brewery was a major local employer with a staff of over 600 and an annual production capacity of 800,000 barrels.

The Gunther family lived at the Bankard-Gunther Mansion on Butcher's Hill until the death of Gunther Sr. in 1912.

After decades of successful brewing in Baltimore, the Gunther Brewing Company was acquired by the Minnesota-based Hamm's Brewing Company in 1960. Three years later, the brewery was sold again, this time to F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Company of New York. Schaefer continued to produce the Gunther brand until the plant was permanently closed in 1978, ending a nearly century-long chapter in Baltimore's brewing history. The former brewery complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002 and has since been redeveloped.^[1]

Architecture

The site comprises 15 masonry buildings. The main structure is a five-story brick L-shaped Romanesque Revival-style brew house with a two-story brick ice plant built about 1910 and one- and two-story boiler room. Additional brew houses built in 1936 and 1950 are also on the property. The later Tulkoff factory and warehouse was built about 1964. The Tulkoff company briefly used the factory for their sauce products at the conclusion of all brewing operations.

After 1978, large portions of the rear walls of some buildings were demolished to facilitate salvage.^[2] The former brewery has been redeveloped into a modern, mixed-use building called The Gunther, much like other Canton buildings.