Then & Now: Porter Brewing Co.

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The E. Porter Brewing Co. is shown March 3, 1964, on Bluff Street in Joliet, Ill., after the vacant building was damaged by a fire. | Joliet Area Historical Museum, Joliet, Ill.

Updated: January 2, 2012 8:01AM

Move over Milwaukee. For 120 years, brewers bottled beer in Joliet, from the opening of the Bluff Street Brewery in 1838 to the closing of the Bohemian Brewing Co. in 1958.

Edwin Porter came to Joliet in 1856. He opened his brewery in 1858 at 138 S. Bluff St. in Joliet.

It burned down in 1868, but Porter rebuilt it into a massive operation that occupied 142-300 S. Bluff St.

There, he made Porter’s Joliet Ale and Lager Beer from the waters of the Des Plaines River.

Porter went on to serve three years on the Joliet City Council and to be elected mayor three times.

His brewery grew and modernized, producing 150 barrels a day. In 1893, the brewery incorporated as E. Porter Brewing Co. Inc.

Prohibition should have shut down operations in 1920, but the brewery kept making beer in defiance of the law. Seized brew was dumped into the canal. Federal agents finally dismantled the plant in the mid-1920s.

The building became an eyesore and burned in 1962.

Today, the Porter Brewing Co. site is occupied by a Bicenntennial Park lot near the truss bridge.

Bronze plaques on boulders in Bicentennial Park commemorate the buildings once there, many of which were demolished by HUD in the 1960s.

The plaque for Porter Brewing Co. reads, “In 1858, Edwin Porter made beer and ale here. By 1889, his

brewery covered nearly two blocks. His 120 mules were stabled across the street. Large underground stone Bierkellers tunneled down to the river. Pure artesian well water helped make the beer exceptional.”

Brewery went down, but not without a fight

By John Whiteside, Herald-News columnist

Published Dec. 3, 1991

A big rock with a historical marker marks the location. But the words on the marker say nothing about the struggle that took place there during the prohibition era.

There was a mighty fight between the G-men and one of the best boxers to ever step into a ring.

The old Porter Brewery on Bluff Street dates back to 1858, as the historical marker states. By 1889, the brewery covered two blocks of land and Edwin Porter, the founder, stabled 120 mules across the street.

“Pure artesian well water helped to make the beer exceptional,” the historical marker says.

But along came the 18th Amendment and prohibition, which took effect in 1920. The law of the land said people could no longer drink alcohol. But the new law didn’t stop the public’s demand for beer.

In the fall of 1921, Patrick “Packey” McFarland bought controlling interest in the Porter Brewery from the daughter of its founder. The brewery was in full operation while the federal government was still trying to figure out how to enforce prohibition.

Packey was a wealthy man, who had once been one of the best lightweight boxers in the world. Between 1904 and 1915, he fought professionally 110 times and lost only once. His last fight with Mike Gibbons in New York had drawn a crowd of 40,000 people.

That fight ended with no decision. But most sports writers thought Packey had won it.

He retired from boxing and came to Joliet to become a popular businessman.

After he bought the brewery, he put his brother in charge of operations and they applied for a federal permit to manufacture beer for medicinal purposes. But that strategy didn’t work.

In April, 1922, the local sheriff stopped a truckload of beer coming out of the plant. Analysis showed the beer at 3 1/2 to 4 percent alcohol, which violated the government’s one-half of one percent alcohol rule.

The sheriff threatened to shut down the brewery with the help of federal agents.

But Packey warned him that any attempts to shut down the brewerywould be met with “quite a fight.”

On April 12, 1922, federal agents seized several truck loads of beer coming from the brewery and raided the plant. An injunction was issued by a federal judge to stop the production of beer.

But production continued.

In May, 1922, Packey’s brother was sentenced to six months in jail and fined $1,000. Packey told the court he wasn’t actively participating in management of the brewery.

There were more raids by federal agents and more truckloads of beer seized from the old brewery during 1923.

In 1924, the government attempted to close the plant for good.

On March 12, 1924, the Herald-News reported, “After five years of operation as an outlaw brewery, earning enormous profits and dividends for its stockholders, through the sale of thousands of barrels of contraband beer in defiance of state and national prohibition acts” the brewery was to be destroyed.

A team of U.S. marshals had arrived at the brewery to begin the destruction. Several thousand barrels of beer were drained into the canal. Federal agents estimated that beer was worth about $300,000 at bootleg

prices of 25 cents a bottle.

That was a knockdown for the brewery but not the final knock out.

Three months later, the federal agents started an investigation to determine why the breweryhadn’t been destroyed in March. As it turned out, the only “destruction” that happened in March was that a hole was chopped in the top of one brewing kettle.

“A hole was chopped in one of the beer kettles while a cameraman for a news reel company took a picture for the action,” the Herald-News reported.

Meanwhile, more beer had been produced and shipped out of the brewery.

The actual destruction of the brewery vats and apparatus didn’t take place until the fall of 1922. That’s when the G-men showed up with sledgehammers, saws and torches to dismantle the 500-gallon vats and machinery.

At that time, they dumped 2,200 barrels of beer, which was worth then about $225,000, into the canal.

“The demolition of the Bluff Street plant writes finis to a story of one of the most profitable of the prohibition breweries in this district,” the Herald-News said.

The old brewery building was considered an eyesore in the early 1950s. The building was used by transients and offered a dangerous playground for children. The city unsuccessfully attempted to condemn and demolish it.

But what the city couldn’t do, fire finally accomplished in 1962.

Nothing remains of the brewerytoday except the big rock with a historical marker. And that marker missed all the interesting parts of the brewery’s prohibition days.