American Brewing Company listed on National Register

THIS 1892 RENDERING OF the American Brewing Co.'s production facility shows it at the time of its construction. The building has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. / COURTESY HISTORICAL PRESERVATION & HERITAGE COMMISSION
THIS 1892 RENDERING OF the American Brewing Co.'s production facility shows it at the time of its construction. The building has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. / COURTESY HISTORICAL PRESERVATION & HERITAGE COMMISSION

PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission announced today that the National Park Service has placed the American Brewing Company, a former brewery in the city’s Valley neighborhood, on the National Register of Historic Places. This register is the federal government’s official list of U.S. properties whose historical and architectural significance makes them worthy of preservation and even rehabilitation.
Built in 1892 and expanded in 1900 and again in 1911, the brewery is noted for its contributions to the history of architecture, engineering and industry, according to RIHPHC. The building rests on about 1.5 acres of land on the northeast corner of Harris Avenue and Eagle Street.
The brewery consists of three buildings that were added over the course of nearly 20 years. The original building is a three-story, brick brewery built in 1892. The previous year, Providence brewer James Hanley and partners received a charter for the brewing of lager beer.
Hanley, a native of Ireland, had decades of experience in beer and liquor production and sales. He hired Adam C. Wagner, a German, Philadelphia-based architect and brewery engineer, who he worked with previously, to design a brewing plant specifically for lager beer. That type of beer was popular at the time, especially among the growing populations of Irish and German immigrants in Providence.
According to RIHPHC, Wagner was one of the pioneers in using mechanical refrigeration to support large-scale production of lager beer. He was a part of a growing international movement of engineers and scientists whose work focused on brewing chemistry, the role of temperature control and the danger of environmental contaminants. Wagner claimed with his designs Hanley’s brewery would be “among the foremost of the complete and well-equipped breweries in the United States.”
The brewery is a massive German Romanesque Revival-style building encased in brick, trimmed with granite atop a granite ashlar foundation. It boasts three stories and seven different “houses” or spaces for all the phases of industrial brewing. The spaces include the malt mill, brew house, stock house, lager racking room, lager wash house, drying house and engine/refrigeration room. In 1893, the plant was staffed with 55 operatives and produced an annual brewing capacity of 70,000 barrels (2,170,000 gallons of lager beer).
Later renamed the Providence Brewing Co., the firm erected a second building, the ice plant, in 1900. The ice plant is a two-story brick building attached to the north elevation of the original building. In 1910, additional capitalization helped to expand the brewery and build a third building for the company. It was a freestanding boiler house, also a two-story brick building with granite trim and a flat-roof. With the expansion of the main building and the addition of the boiler house, the Providence Brewing Co.’s output tripled to 200,000 barrels per year.
Hanley died two years after the last building addition to the company, but his business continued to thrive. The brewery employed 108 workers to run operations by 1917.
In 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act, otherwise known as the National Prohibition Act, prohibiting the manufacture, sale and transport of alcoholic beverages and consequently, halting the brewery’s profitable production. Providence Brewing Co. tried to produce and sell “Puro,” a nonalcoholic cereal beverage as an alternative, but the business was not viable and subsequently, the brewery’s doors closed in the mid-1920s.
The building became home to two storage and moving companies over the years, and was then owned by a management company. Now it resides with Freedom City Properties LLC. The current owner wishes to revitalize the buildings, applying for $10 million state and federal historic preservation tax credits in order to convert the buildings into 32 apartments and commercial spaces.
RIHPHC Executive Director Edward F. Sanderson remarked, “The American Brewing Company building is an eye-catching artifact of Providence’s burgeoning economy and multinational immigration at the turn of the 19th century. Its rehabilitation for business and apartments is an example of the current trend for urban revitalization through historic preservation.”

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