Saturday, April 18, 2015

A SIGN OF "THE TIMES" (#1)





This post concerns a building, located at the southwest corner of West 26th and Carroll, presently used by local Cleveland company, Great Lakes Brewing. The problem is what is being said about the building, historically, via a sign that is attached to an outside wall of an adjacent, internally attached structure, also part of the same operation. 

In essence, what it says [see accompanying photo] is that the building next to the one with the sign was constructed "vintage 1880". This estimate is far from the historical reality.
Please examine the accompanying Sanborn fire-insurance map, taken from a larger view, which shows the very immediate area in 1896. Where this building was built is the area highlighted in yellow.  One can easily see that, at that time, sixteen years after 1880, there were still two houses and a handful of small outbuildings at this site -- NOT this large brick industrial-type building.

1896

This structure was, in fact, constructed in 1906 -- twenty-six years after 1880 -- for the Cleveland-Sandusky Brewing Company, a consolidation of several formerly independent breweries in those two cities, as a bottling plant. Its architect was Richard Griessen, of Chicago [Bldg. Prmt. App. 276, 1/24/1906].
-- C.B.

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