A.B.C - The Original King of Bottled Beer
By Kevin Kious and Donald Roussin

The history of this Koehler family brewery started in 1890 with the founding of the American Brewing Co. (ABC.) of St. Louis, Missouri. This article tells the story of the brewery after Prohibition opening with the repeal in 1933 ......

Hugo Koehler kept the family brewery open during the early years of Prohibition. ABC. was then under the umbrella of the bankrupt Independent Breweries Co., with Koehler as president. Like other brewers of the times, he turned elsewhere to make a living, but remained active in I.B.C. and the brewery. Repeal was assured by the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Investors forecast huge profits in the new beer market, and were eager to buy and reopen old breweries.

The original American Brewery was the only I.B.C. plant that had not been boarded up years before, making it an ideal target for investors. In June, 1933, a Chicago syndicate headed by A. D. Plamandon agreed to pay $275,000 for the purchase of the A. B. C. Brewery from the General Mortgage Bondholders' Protective Committee of the I. B. C. Plamandon had been formerly involved in two Windy City concerns, a malting house, and the local Federal League baseball team. Whether Plamandon's group was unable to find a brewery in Chicago, or if A. B. C. just seemed like a good investment, is not known. A few weeks later in early July, the A. B. C. Brewing Corporation was chartered under the laws of Delaware (still a common corporate practice, due the state's favorable business laws), with an authorized capitalization of $300,000. Mr. Plamandon was elected president of the company, which an officer of the investment company involved in the sale stated was expected to begin producing beer within two or three months.

However, three months came and went, and brewing had not yet resumed. Perhaps because beer was not yet going out the door, Mr. Plamandon was shoved down the corporate ladder, as on December 7, 1933, it was announced that Richard S.Hawes, Jr., was the new president of the company. Richard was a scion of a prominent St. Louis family. His father was Richard S. Hawes, Sr., vicepresident of the First National Bank, and his uncle was a former U. S. Senator, Harry B. Hawes. Also of note, Richard Jr.'s wife Marion was a direct descendent of Adam Lemp, founder of the Lemp family brewing dynasty in St. Louis. Rounding out the top A. B. C. management team were Earl P Morton as vice-president and general sales manager; Dwight D. Thomas as secretary; and Henry B. Wellenkoetter as superintendent and brewing director (brewmaster). The board of directors was staffed by a number of prominent St. Louis area businessmen, including James A. Dacey and A. S. Knapp. Former president Plamandon had stuck around after losing the top spot, accepting the position of corporate secretary. Brewmaster Wellenkoetter brought extensive experience with him when he assumed the brewmaster's position at A. B. C. Before Prohibition, he had been heavily involved with the St. Louis Brewing Association, particularly the Wainwright Brewery. With the enactment of Prohibition, he established a brewery in Canada, and was continuously active in that country's brewing industry until his return to St. Louis to take up the making of A. B. C. beer.

What role the original buyers of the brewery, the "Chicago syndicate", were still playing in the new company after Richard Hawes started sitting in the president's chair is unknown. In any case, it would not be the last time that Chicagoans would be involved in running A. B. C. By the end of 1933, President Hawes announced that one hundred men were engaged in installing the newest type of brewing equipment in the plant. $125,000 was being spent to modernize A. B. C., which, when brewing resumed, would have the capacity to produce 165,000 barrels of beer annually. Hawes announced to the press that A. B. C. would be ready to start production of draught and bottle beer by the end of January 1934. Hawes' projected start-up date for the brewery turned out to be overly optimistic, as rehabilitation took about three months longer than expected. Finally, on May 26, 1934, A. B. C. beer was placed back on the market. The public demand for the new brew was so great that sixty brand new trucks were kept busy making deliveries all over the St. Louis metropolitan area. The new trucks had closed, insulated bodies with built-in cooling units, helping to insure the proper maintenance of temperature, an advanced and innovative design for the time.

To raise additional funds to pay for all of the improvement to the business, A. B. C. made application to list its capital stock on the St. Louis Stock Exchange. By June, 1934, the company was selling 250,000 shares of this stock to the public, which had been preceded by a prior stock sale, and a bond issue of $183,000 maturing in 1938. While the brewery initially focused its marketing muscle on selling A. B. C. beer in the immediate St. Louis area, by the summer of 1934 the company was announcing plans to eventually expand distribution, hopefully throughout the mid-west. At an autumn 1934 board meeting, Richard Hawes resigned as corporate president. He was succeeded by R. D. Robinson, a former Indianapolis investment banker. Changes were also made on the board of directors at this time, signaling that all might not be well for the company.

Unfortunately, while beer sales were relatively good, the company's public announcements were not matching its financial performance. The one year delay in bringing A. B. C. beer to market had given competitors a significant head start in establishing marketing beachheads, ones that A. B. C. found difficult to storm. Stating that "cut throat" competition had followed Repeal, resulting in "excessive sales costs and financial difficulties", on April 3, 1935, the A. B. C. Brewing Corporation filed a debtor's bankruptcy reorganization petition with the Federal Court. Assets were listed at about $1.2 million, facing liabilities of $917,000. The biggest creditor was the Independent Realty Investment Company, which held a first deed of trust for 20% of the liability.

A. B. C.'s reorganization plan postulated that since all of its debts could not be paid at once, how about stretching the obligations out over time to facilitate the company's financial recovery? As presented to the Federal Court, the proposal extended the maturity on the company's first mortgage from 1938 to 1945. Also proposed was for the second deed and the nonnegotiable notes to be "retired" on the basis of 50% cash, 162/3% in 12 monthly notes, and 33'/3% in new preferred stock. General creditors would receive the same settlement. Lastly, the plan proposed increasing A. B. C.'s $1 common stock from 300,000 to 450,000 shares, and the issuance of 12,000 shares of preferred stock at $5 a share. By September of 1935, the required twothirds of the creditors and a majority of the stockholders had approved the reorganization plan. On September 20, Federal Judge Charles B. Davis (who was getting to know a number of St. Louis area brewery executives due to the filing of several other bankruptcy petitions around this time) approved the plan, and A. B. C. was again off and running.

Running, but not for long under the then present A. B. C. management. On November 23, 1935, Oscar Baur, President of the Terre Haute Brewing Company, announced that he was turning his attentions west, and had purchased controlling interest in the A. B. C. Brewery. Baur was not looking for additional capacity to expand production of his Indiana brewery's flagship brand Champagne Velvet. Instead, Baur stated that beer manufactured at the A. B. C. plant would continue to be sold under the long established A. B. C. Bohemian brand name. Baur also announced that the brewery would again be rebuilt with "new machinery and equipment." Oscar Baur became president of A. B. C. and with him Robert Baur as secretary-treasurer.

Apparently, just controlling the running of A. B. C. was not enough for Oscar Baur. By May 1937, he brought before the stockholders a plan to dissolve the A. B. C. Brewing Corporation, and transfer the assets of the corporation to the Terre Haute Brewing Company. Baur's sales pitch to the stockholders was that the company had struck out in a business sense the prior year when it had lost $73,000. The merger, which he expected would substantially reduce expenses, would put A. B. C. back into the brewing business ball game. The majority of the A. B. C. stockholders agreed to accept Baur's plan, and approved the merger. However, as in any business or game, there are frequently players who like to cry foul, and such was the case of one minor league A. B. C. stockholder, James T Murphy, who held only 200 shares. Claiming that there was a "taint of unfairness" in the purchase of the A. B. C. stock by Terre Haute, Murphy filed a lawsuit in Federal Court to block the merger. Judge Davis again entered the playing field, and dismissed Murphy's suit, stating by law there was no reason to block the merger. More to the point, said the judge, the sale of A. B. C. to the Terre Haute Brewing Company, via Baur, had enabled the troubled brewery to be loaned a substantial amount of money, capital necessary for the required continuing rehabilitation of the old facility.

Terre Haute's reign over the venerable A. B. C. plant was to be brief, however, as in late 1938 the new owners shut down the brewery portion of the A. B. C. complex. The site was not abandoned, however, as the Terre Haute Brewery continued distributing Champagne Velvet beer shipped in from Terre Haute out of its now former St. Louis branch during the next several months. In March, 1939, the brewery changed hands again, to another out of town group. A syndicate of Chicago investors, headed by Louis Kanne, purchased the assets of the A. B. C. plant from the Terre Haute Brewing Company, via a mortgage, for an undisclosed amount. Kanne, quickly elected president of the new company after the transaction, announced that the A. B. C. Brewing Company would reopen with 75 employees within a week of obtaining a brewing license from the City of St. Louis. Kanne was confident about being able to so quickly resume operations as A. B. C. was, in his mind, an up to date brewery in which a half a million dollars had been spent for improvements before it had been closed.

Louis Kanne may have been new to the business scene in St. Louis, but was not a newcomer to the brewing industry. He had resigned as treasurer and general manager of the Manhattan Brewing Company of Chicago, a position he had held for five and a half years, before coming to head A. B. C. Prior to Manhattan, Louis had been engaged in the banking business.
In a newspaper article at the time, Kanne described the new company as a "family affair", with his brother Benjamin Kanne as vice-president and Meyer Lazarus, his brother-in-law, as secretary-treasurer. Kanne and his associates first had to survive the scrutiny of local excise commissioner Lawrence McDaniel before the brewery could resume operations. At a hearing, Louis Kanne denied that Manhattan had been a "Capone brewery" and that the new corporation had devious intentions of shipping beer into dry areas of nearby states. A couple of weeks later, McDaniel announced that he would issue A. B. C. its operating permit since investigators found "no reason why a permit should be denied."

The sales territory planned for the new company was comprised of Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas. Kanne further said that he expected that improvements of $100,000 would soon be made, including the purchase of approximately 25 delivery trucks and "additional motorized equipment ...when business warrants it." As the trade name "A. B. C. Bohemian" had remained the property of the Terre Haute Brewing Company, it was announced that Kanne's new company would market its product simply as "ABC Beer". Hopes were high that the new A. B. C. Brewing Company could soon operate the brewery at its full rated production capacity of 300,000 barrels a year. While the brewery seemed on the road to recovery, in actuality, it was about to go over a cliff. The A. B. C. Brewing Company terminated all business on January 31, 1940. In a statement of affairs signed by president Louis Kanne and filed in the U. S. District Court that same day, assets were listed at $18,529, and liabilities at $29,660, In February, 1940, the A. B. C. Brewing Company was back in Federal Court, when three creditors filed a petition of involuntary bankruptcy, alleging the brewery owed them $13,878 and had committed acts of bankruptcy in making preferred payments to other creditors. Kanne's new company had defaulted on its mortgage, and ownership of the brewery reverted back to the Terre Haute Brewing Company. Terre Haute in turn unloaded the property to investor Arthur H. Fuldner. The end had come.

While the A. B. C. Brewery was closed forever, its giant next door neighbor was continuing to expand, both in terms of sales, and in the size of its brewery. In September, 1943, AnheuserBusch purchased the A. B. C. tract and buildings, which took up the area bounded by Broadway, Dorcas, Seventh and Lynch Streets, from Fuldner. Finally, in May, 1952, Anheuser-Busch razed all of the buildings, with much of the area resurfaced as a parking lot. Few today know that when parking on Anheuser-Busch's lot off South 7th Street and Broadway, they are truly visiting the home of the "King of All Bottled Beers"!
Curt and Ellen Faulkenberry, Kent and Joan Knowles, John Kottemann, Rich LaSusa, Sam Marcum, Kent Patterson and Robert Thebeau provided assistance in the preparation of this article.

Article reprinted from the ‘American Breweriana Journal’ with the permission of The American Breweriana Association. The image is of the Koehler family brewery (A.B.C.) in an 1890 print. Anheuser-Busch purchased the site in 1943. The buildings were razed in 1952 with much of the area resurfaced as a parking lot. Visitors to the AnheuserBusch brewery who park in the lot at 7th and Broadway are truly visiting the original home of the "King of All Bottled Beer".