| Florida Brewing Company Building | |
|---|---|
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| General information | |
| Address | 1234 E 5th Ave |
| Town or city | Tampa, Florida |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 27°57′32″N82°26′45″W / 27.959°N 82.44594°W |
The Florida Brewing Company building is a historic brewery building that once housed Ybor City Brewing Company, which became Florida Brewing Company. It has been restored and converted into a law office. It is the tallest building in Tampa's Ybor City Historic District. [1]
The Florida Brewing Company Building was built to house the Florida Brewing Company, which was founded in 1896 by cigar industrialists [2] Vicente Ybor and Edward Manrara. The brewery building is six stories tall and remains the tallest building in Ybor City.
Florida Brewing Company was the first brewery in the state of Florida. When operational in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the building housed the leading exporter of beer to Cuba and was a leader in western Florida. After brewing operations ceased, the building was used for a variety of purposes, although it was eventually abandoned and fell into disrepair. Recently, the building was renovated and is now home to several commercial enterprises.
It was built on the Government Spring, which originally supplied water to the military men of Fort Brooke. [1] Florida's Paleo Indians believed the water in the spring to be of a sacred nature. Prior to Anglo settlement, they brought their sick and wounded to bathe in the water with the belief that it would cure their injuries and diseases. Nearly every native tribe respected the spring's holiness and thus would use the land around the spring as a peace zone, where no one would attack. Influenced by these tales and others in Europe, Spanish Conquistadors fell under the belief that there were crystalline fountains of youth hidden in the springs. Juan Ponce de León helped spread these rumors when he and a Spanish Armada set out to find a mythical fountain of youth. Many still believe the spring to have supernatural powers.
In its prime, The Florida Brewing Company produced 80,000 barrels of beer annually. It was the leading exporter of beer to Cuba in the U.S. and the premier brewery on Florida's west coast. Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders visited for a beer in celebration after the Spanish–American War. [3]
The brewery survived the adversities of the Prohibition and the Great Depression. However, the business closed in 1961 as a result of the embargo on Cuba and the opening of rival breweries by Anheuser-Busch and the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company in Tampa. [3] [4]
In the years following its closing, the former brewery served several purposes. It was used as a storage place for fresh tobacco in the 1960s and later became a bomb shelter throughout the Cold War. However, it was abandoned for the latter 25 years of the 20th century, and its condition declined. The former brewery became generally considered a detriment to the redevelopment of Ybor City. [3] [4]
In 1999, attorney Dale Swope and contractor Joseph Kokolakis purchased the building to restore and convert it into a law firm and office space. [5] The restoration project received a Builders' Choice grand award in adaptive re-use.
Labatt Brewing Company Limited is a Anheuser-Busch InBev-owned brewery headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1847, Labatt is the largest brewer in Canada.
Anheuser-Busch Companies, LLC, is an American brewing company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Since 2008, it has been wholly owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, now the world's largest brewing company, which owns multiple global brands, notably Budweiser, Michelob, Stella Artois, and Beck's.
Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company was an American brewery based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was once the largest producer of beer in the United States. Its namesake beer, Schlitz, was known as "The beer that made Milwaukee famous" and was advertised with the slogan "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer". Schlitz first became the largest beer producer in the US in 1902 and enjoyed that status at several points during the first half of the 20th century, exchanging the title with Anheuser-Busch multiple times during the 1950s.
Ybor City is a historic neighborhood just northeast of downtown Tampa, Florida, United States. It was founded in the 1880s by Vicente Martinez-Ybor and other cigar manufacturers and populated by thousands of immigrants, mainly from Cuba, Spain, and Italy. For the next 50 years, workers in Ybor City's cigar factories rolled hundreds of millions of cigars annually.
Adolphus Busch was the German-born co-founder of Anheuser-Busch with his father-in-law, Eberhard Anheuser. He introduced numerous innovations, building the success of the company in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He became a philanthropist, using some of his wealth for education and humanitarian needs. His great-great-grandson, August Busch IV, is a former CEO of Anheuser-Busch.
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Busch Gardens is the name of two amusement parks in the United States, owned and operated by SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment. The original park is in Tampa, Florida, and the second park is in Williamsburg, Virginia. There were also previously Busch Gardens parks in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California (1964–1979) and Houston, Texas (1971–1973). The "Busch Gardens" name was earlier used to refer to the gardens developed by Adolphus Busch near his home in Pasadena, California, which were open to the public from 1906 to 1937.
Blue Point Brewing Company is a brewery that is a subsidiary of Tilray located on Long Island, in Patchogue, New York. The brewery offers a variety of year-round beers, and several seasonal brews, as well as a 'tasting room' which is open to the public on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. The brewery hosts an annual Cask Ale Festival, concerts and other events in the brew yard.
Latrobe Brewing Company was founded in 1893 in Latrobe, Pennsylvania as part of the Pittsburgh Brewing Company. Forced to close in 1920 due to prohibition, it was purchased by the Tito brothers and reopened in 1933 selling “Latrobe Old German” and “Latrobe Pilsner” beers. The year 1939 saw the introduction of Rolling Rock beer and Latrobe became one of the largest breweries in the United States. It was purchased by Labatt Brewing Company in 1987, which in turn was purchased in 1995 by the Belgian brewing conglomerate corporation Interbrew, which merged later into InBev in 2004.
Beer in the United States is manufactured in breweries which range in size from industry giants to brew pubs and microbreweries. The United States produced 196 million barrels (23.0 GL) of beer in 2012, and consumes roughly 28 US gallons (110 L) of beer per capita annually. In 2011, the United States was ranked fifteenth in the world in per capita consumption, while total consumption was second only to China.
Genesee Brewing Company is an American brewery located along the Genesee River in Rochester, New York. From 2000 to 2009, the company was known as the High Falls Brewing Company. In 2009, High Falls was acquired by the capital investment firm KPS Capital. Together with newly acquired Labatt USA, KPS merged the two companies as North American Breweries. Along with this change, High Falls Brewery changed its name back to the original "Genesee Brewing Company" operating under the North American Breweries name. In October 2012, North American Breweries was purchased by FIFCO.
August Anheuser "Gussie" Busch Jr. was an American brewing magnate who built the Anheuser-Busch Companies into the largest brewery in the world by 1957; he acted as company chairman from 1946 to 1975.
Ybor City Museum State Park is a Florida State Park in Tampa, Florida's Ybor City. The museum occupies the former Ferlita Bakery building at 1818 9th Avenue in the Ybor City Historic District. The bakery was known for producing cuban bread and its ovens are part of the museum displays covering the history of the cigar industry and the Latin community from the 1880s through the 1930s. There is also an ornamental garden in the building.
Vicente Martinez Ybor was a Spanish entrepreneur who first became a noted industrialist and cigar manufacturer in Cuba, then Key West, and finally Tampa, Florida.
Ybor City is a historic neighborhood that includes the Ybor City Historic District in Tampa, Florida. It is located just northeast of downtown Tampa and north of Port Tampa Bay. The neighborhood has distinct architectural, culinary, cultural, and historical legacy that reflects its multi-ethnic composition. It was unique in the American South as a prosperous manufacturing community built and populated almost entirely by immigrants.
Anheuser-Busch, a wholly owned subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, is the largest brewing company in the United States, with a market share of 45 percent in 2016.
Bavarian Brewing Company was a brewery established in Covington, Kentucky, in 1866 by Julius Deglow, but became known as the Bavarian Brewery around 1870. The brewery was originally located on Pike Street, but expanded to 12th Street within a decade. After John Meyer acquired the brewery in 1881, he sold an interest to William Riedlin in 1882. The company operated under the proprietorship of Meyer & Riedlin starting in 1884, before becoming incorporated as the Bavarian Brewery Co. in 1889 by William Riedlin. The company was family owned until it was acquired by International Breweries, Inc.(IBI) in 1959. However, it operated as the Bavarian Division of IBI and continued to produce its flagship beer, Bavarian's, until the facility closed in 1966. The property was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and renovated as a multipurpose complex for food, beverage and entertainment uses in 1996. It operated as the Brew Works at the Party Source and Jillian's, but closed in 2006. The former structure containing the Brew and Mill Houses, built in 1911, was repurposed into office space becoming part of the Kenton County Government Center, opening in 2019. This office complex has a Bavarian Brewery Exhibit and it is accompanied by a Bavarian Brewery website.
Cigar City Brewing, LLC is a craft brewery in Tampa, Florida, at 3924 West Spruce Street. Founded in 2007 by Joey Redner, it has been producing beer in Tampa since January 30, 2009. It currently produces approximately 170,000 barrels of beer annually. Since 2009, it has brewed over 6,000 individual brands of beer.