Kansas City Brewing and Distilling Heritage Trail

Entries on This Tour

1. Muehlbach Brewery (1938-1956)

Shortly after prohibition, the Muehlebach Brewing Company opened a brewery at this location and operated it until their company was acquired by Schlitz. Kansas City's Muehlebach family had previously operated a vast business empire centered on brewing between the late 1860s and Prohibition. A local favorite whose products were delivered to an average of 28,000 homes per year before Prohibition, Muehlebach once again began producing its famous Pilsener and Lager labels here in the River Market neighborhood. They also produced a special “green bottle” brew sold only at the Hotel Muehlebach, a 500-room downtown Kansas City hotel. Muehlebach’s post-prohibition revival was a success despite some setbacks during World War II, and they sold 244,000 barrels in 1947, much higher than this plant’s original 1938 production capacity of 150,000 barrels. This production peak was created by a combination of focus on the local Kansas City market, outside capital, acquisition, and aggressive out-of-state expansion. However, in 1948, production was hampered by U.S. grain commitments to the postwar Marshall Plan in Europe, as well as a nationwide glass shortage, and the brewery declined, posting its first loss in 1951. The brewery was sold to Milwaukee's Schlitz Brewing Company in 1956, but the Muehlebach name remains known throughout the city.

2. Kansas City Branch, Pabst Brewing Company

Established in Milwaukee by Jacob Best in 1844, Pabst opened a branch in Chicago in 1878 and a second branch here in 1879 at 100 Main, then the corner of Commercial and Main. By 1898, the brewing complex included buildings with addresses from 2 Main to 110 Main. In 1911, Pabst's Kansas City branch was operated on the southeast corner of 21st and Central which later became the headquarters of the Pendergast Distributing Company.

3. West Bottoms and The Wettest Block in the World

9th Street between State Line and Genessee on 9th Street was known as “The Wettest Block in the World” fthe wettest block in the world following Kansas prohibition with 23/24 buildings on the north and south side of 9th Street being saloons or liquor stores.Building at SW corner of 9th and State was constructed by Pabst Brewery in 1911. St Louis Ave and State Line, about a block south, was home to Joseph Schlitz Brewing depot.

4. J. Rieger & Co. (1877-1919)

In 1877, Jacob Rieger established a distillery across from the Livestock Exchange that would grow to become the largest mail-order distributor of whiskey in the United States. J. Rieger & Co. operated until prohibition in 1919.

5. 14th Street Brewery; Star Brewery

Now home to Main Street Theatre, this was the site of one of the largest breweries in Kansas City in the 1870s and 1880s. F.H. Kump arrived in Kansas City in 1859 and entered the soda manufacturing business with a small plant here in 1867. Kump used his equipment to bottle beer for other brewers, and within two years, the operation expanded to brewing and bottling his own beer. By 1884, the business had expanded and produced around 12,000 barrels per year when F.H. Kumps Star Ale Brewery was sold to Fred Heim and his family. Heim would later build one of the largest breweries in the city in the East Bottoms. This location was known by several names during Heim's tenure as owner, including the Bavarian Brewing Company. The theater was completed in 1921 and included several unique features, such as tunnels to the adjacent President Hotel that were utilized mainly by traveling actors who prepared their costumes and makeup in their rooms. The theater also featured a nursery for children whose parents were attending the show and a sub-basement with cages for animals such as elephants that could be lifted to the stage.

6. Price Candy Building; Tom's Town Distillery

Now known as Tom Town's Distillery, named after Kansas City's infamous "Boss" mayor, Tom Pendergast, the building was built in 1908 and became the headquarter for the Price Candy Company. The wealth gained from the candy and chocolate business allowed them to live among the social elites. Charles Price II, son of the company's founder, married the heir to a food empire, befriended a future U.S. President, and enjoyed immense success in the private sector and as a U.S. diplomat.

7. George Hierb’s Main Street Brewery; Muehlebach Brewery (1869-1929)

In 1870, Swiss brothers George and John Muehlebach created one of Kansas City’s longest-running Kansas City breweries after purchasing George Hierb’s Main Street Brewery which was located here at the corner of 18th Street and Main Street. Hierb's brewery grew from a small shack producing beer in the mid-1860s to a sizeable plant that produced 3,000 barrels per year by 1869. This acquisition was part of the George Muehlebach Brewing Company's pattern of expansion that included the construction of a Romanesque brewhouse at this site that soon became known as the “Beer Castle.” That investment increased production at this site to 100,000 barrels per year by 1911. The Muehlebach brothers kept the Main Street Brewery title from their purchase in 1870 until 1884. After that time, the business saw several name changes that reflected the growth of Muehleback and the value of that brand in Kansas City and surrounding communities. When the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banned the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States, the 18th and Main location closed in 1929 despite Muehlebach’s attempts to diversify their business with several soda drink products and an alcohol-free cereal beverage named Mulo. Muehlebach reopened after Prohibition was repealed in 1933, although it took five years, until February 5, 1938, to secure funding and a new site for the brewery at 4th and Oak Streets near the Kansas City riverfront. The old brewery at 18th and Main was condemned and demolished in 1941. While the post-prohibition Muehlebach company grew through the 1940s and early 1950s, it succumbed to a similar fate as many large regional breweries, and its 4th and Oak brewery was sold to Minneapolis-based Schlitz Brewing Company in 1956.

8. Schlitz Brewing Company Warehouse; Lidia's Restaurant

The Milwaukee-based brewing giant Schlitz established a depot near 9th Street and State Line in the West Bottoms in 1900. Following the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, Schlitz sold franchise agreements with local distributors, and Kansas City's franchise was acquired by mobster John Lazia. In 1956, Schlitz purchased the George Muehlebach Brewery, a vast complex in the River Market area from 3rd to 5th Streets and Oak to Grand.

9. Pabst Depot (1911-1920) Pendergast Distributing Company

Following the construction of Union Station, Pabst built a two-story depot. At that time, the company owned and operated several saloons throughout the city, a common practice that was made illegal as part of the compromise legislation that repealed prohibition. Tom Pendergast took control of the Pabst operation here, distributing the cereal beverages made by Pabst and other brewers during prohibition and likely operating bootlegging operation from this location.

10. Rochester Brewery

Rochester Brewery, also known as the J.D. Iler Brewing Company, had a vast complex that operated at this location from 1888 to 1919 when Prohibition closed breweries around the country or compelled them to produce other products such as sodas and non-alcoholic beer. In 1905, Rochester merged with Imperial and Heim breweries to become Kansas City Breweries Company. The only remaining building from the complex is the former bottling building which today has a sign that says "Office Products Alliance." In recent years, a modern brewery operating nearby at 2129 Washington Street adopted the Rochester name.

11. Boulevard Brewing Company

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12. Imperial Brewing Company (1902-2023)

Constructed in 1902, the ruins of the Imperial Brewing Company Building towered over I-35 for decades until its demolition in 2023, serving as a reminder of Kansas City's "golden age of brewing" in the early and mid-20th century. Located in the Westside neighborhood, the brewery began operations in 1902 and operated for around 80 years. The structure is a great example of Victorian and Romanesque architecture and is the only major brewery complex in the city that predates the era of Prohibition. The building was vacant for around half the amount of time it was occupied, leading to deterioration. A three-alarm fire in 2012 caused so much damage that attempts to restore and repurpose the sprawling structure became financially untenable. The structure was demolished in 2023.

13. Goulding's Last Chance Salloon

Goulding’s Last Chance Saloon operated at 3205 Southwest Blvd. from 1898 to 1951. The Kansas/Missouri state line bisected the building in such a way that patrons would enter the building in Kansas but could walk across the interior into Missouri, where the Gouldings operated a retail liquor store and saloon. During the Pendergast era, the Last Chance operated as an illegal gambling den. Its unique location caused legal quandaries for police, who would arrive to arrest someone, only to find that the person had walked to the other side of the state line and technically out of their jurisdiction. When state authorities raided to bust up the gambling den, they would often find that all of the gambling tables were sitting on the other side of the state line. Today, the Quicktrip at 31st and Southwest Blvd. sits at this location.

14. Tivoli Gardens (1870-1883), Signboard Hill (1914-1973), Westin Crown Center

Now home to the Westin Kansas City at Crown Center Hotel, this location has been a crossroads and a destination throughout the city's history. The road that connected Westport to Westport Landing on the Missouri River ran through this area, and this was later the site of a stone quarry that produced many of the city's earliest buildings. In the 1870s, this was the site of Tivoli Gardens, a small amusement park with a brewery and German-style beer garden. After Union Station was completed in 1914, roads were extended, and the resulting cuts into the hills to create the roads created a high point here. The resulting bluff was soon surrounded by dozens of advertisements, resulting in the nickname Signboard Hill. At the base of the hill, a small business district sprung up that catered to railroad workers with restaurants, bars, and hotels, including the nine-story Plaza Hotel. The majority of Signboard Hill and the business district were removed during the construction of the Crown Center redevelopment project that opened in 1973. This former hill became Crown Center Hotel, today part of the Westin chain. The hotel was built into the last remaining section of Signboard Hill, and a small portion of the hill’s bedrock has been preserved inside the hotel and converted to a three-story indoor waterfall.

15. Anheuser-Busch, Kansas City Branch (1883-1919)

St. Louis brewer Anheuser Busch established a Kansas City branch at this location on the east side of Walnut at 20th Street in 1883. The branch expanded steadily as the company's share of the Midwestern beer market grew, and by the early 20th century the brewer's complex spread to 19th Street. Prohibition led to the closure of the facility after 1919, and the space is not mostly occupied by parking lots.

16. Lemp Brewery Depot (1895) and McClure Flats

Constructed in 1895, this brick structure with its castle-like façade was home to what was known as a "beer depot" at the turn-of-the-century. The building was owned by the Lemp Brewery Complex in St. Louis and sold beer that had been stored in temperture controlled caves in St. Louis and then transported here by rail. This was one of around sixty beer depots operated by Lemp, who used this building as a stable with wagons and horses that carried beer from rail cars and distributed it throughout the city. The depot also sold beer directly to local residents, usually by the bucketful. At this time, it was common to send children on that errand, so it was common to see small children carefully returning home with a full pail that would supply the family's needs a day or two in an era before refrigeration. The building was located next to McClure Flats, a small complex of mostly windowless tenements that was home to many new arrivals in the city from the 1880s to just after the completion of Union Station in 1914.

17. Street Department Building; Vine Street Brewing

Now home to Missouri's first Black-owned brewery, this historic stone structure was constructed in x for the Street Department

18. Goetz Brewing Company

what was then the northeast corner of 17th and Indiana

19. Heim Brewing Company; J. Rieger & Co.

Located in the historic Heim Brewing Company Bottling Plant, constructed in 1901, this modern-day distillery pays tribute to a historic brand of Kansas City whiskey and includes a gallery of artifacts dedicated to the city's brewing and distilling history. The distillery's name is a tribute to the legacy of Jacob Rieger, who arrived in Kansas City from Austria-Hungary in 1885 and established J. Rieger & Co. two years later and operated a distillery at 1529 Genessee in the West Bottoms. The original Rieger distillery operated until the passage of the Volstead Act in 1919 and ceased production until the end of prohibition in 1933. While a small number of distilleries survived prohibition, given lax enforcement in Kanas City, the Rieger family opened a bank. The West Bottoms building that was home to the Rieger distillery was demolished in the 1950s and replaced with a parking lot. Rieger Whiskey's return began in 2009 when a local bartender created a speakeasy, a business that led to greater interest in the "spirited" history of Kansas City. In 2018, the new modern J. Rieger Company acquired this former bottling plant building in the historic Heim brewery complex in the city's East Bottoms.

This Tour is a Thematic Tour or Heritage Trail.