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NPS Fwm 10-900-a OMB APp�af Afm 1024-0019 IB -86l ' United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number s - 7 Page 1 MUESSEL/DREWRY'S BREWERY COMPLEX ST. JOSEPh UuuNTx 1N CLASSIFICATION There.are 7 contributing buildings: the office/brewery complex; the connected keg storage and washing buildings that once were connected to the brewery;. the bottling works/warehousing/shipping complex; the 1930s warehouse on the south edge.of the property; the mechanics building; the earlier bottling works/spent grain drying building; the small brick building south of the three silos. There are 2 contributing structures: the single grain silo and the three contiguous grain silos. There is one non-contributing building: the concrete -block --warehouse building once connected to the bottling works. There are 2 non-contributing structures: the concrete foundation'that was once a warehouse connected to the bottling works and the power substation. NARRATIVE DESCRIPTION The former Muessel Brewery predated virtually everything that stands around it. (The original Muessel property contained over 136 acres, with the brewery located at the far north end near the west boundary.) To the north, west, and south, the area is mostly residential. Immediately west is Muessel Park, where a pond was once located from -which the brewery harvested ice.The pond and surrounding low land was drained in the 1930s as a Works Progress Administration project. To the east is a commercial district strung along Portage Avenue. The earliest (1860s) brewery buildings on the site, most of which were brick, gradually were replaced, although there appears to be one section --almost completely surrounded --remaining that may date to that initial period. -Otherwise, the brewery's oldest surviving buildings date from the turn of the century. Additions and new buildings continued to be constructed into the 1960s under Drewry's. Nearly all the historic buildings are red brick. While there are technically over twenty buildings and structures on the site, the majority are linked one to another and are actually serial additions.. What was once a thriving manufacturing and distributing facility is only partially occupied today with a variety of small businesses, offices, and warehousing.