Archive for the ‘McAvoy Brewing’ Category
McAvoy Brewing Company
I added two new Wikipedia entries tonight, both are pretty stubby in nature – McAvoy Brewing Company and John H. McAvoy. I ran into the McAvoy Brewing Company a few years ago at the Quincy Brown Line stop, that’s the station that’s all old-timey, with a bunch of 1800′s advertisements on the platform. One of them is a J.C. Leyendecker (I think) illustrated advertisement for McAvoy Malt Marrow. McAvoy Brewing was a Chicago Company, founded by John H. McAvoy and H.V. Bemis in 1865. Leyendecker was McAvoy’s great nephew by marriage, but entered into his illustration career a decade after McAvoy’s death in 1893. So, it’s not entirely clear (to me) if he ever worked for the company as an advertisement illustrator.
Regardless, I was pretty stoked to find a 1800′s Chicago brewery with my name on it, even though I can’t find a shred of evidence linking me to John, it’s still pretty cool. I bought a few advertisements for the company on Ebay, and have them waiting to be framed to hang over my desk. On a bit of a respite from the whole Isham Randolph / Robert Isham Randolph project, I thought I’d dive into the history of the company a bit. What I found was interesting, but hard to express in dry Wikipedia format.
Bemis founded the company several years before McAvoy moved to Chicago. McAvoy was a successful entrepreneur, and was flush with fresh-sold tannery cash from an operation he set up in South Haven Michigan when he moved to Chicago in 1864. I don’t know why he chose to get into the brewing business, but he bought into the Bemis Brewing Company, and founded McAvoy & Bemis Brewing in 1865. The company built a state of the art brewery on the lakefront at 24th street (now the location of McCormick Place). Dennis McClendon, of Chicago Cartographics, was kind enough to find me a map location of the brewery from the Robinson fire insurance map of 1886. You can even see McAvoy’s house around the corner from the brewery.
The McAvoy Brewing Company Brewery as of 1886
The Tribune ran a great piece describing the brewery building in 1883 defying the world to build a better brewery, an excerpt describes the “fine furniture”:
Come on world! Try and build a better Brewery!
Kind of a big deal
Despite the obvious richness of the brewery facade, there’s hints of trouble in 1884 when Bemis retires, citing ill health. The brewery is re-incorporated as the McAvoy Brewing Company, just in time for a series of creditors to demand payment. Although the Tribune calls out both events, they never connect the dots. Bemis, despite his supposed failing health, would go on to run the (at the time) well known Hotel Richelieu in Chicago until his suicide in 1906 at the age of 63. The suicide note again calls out his ill-health.
McAvoy died several years previous, in 1889, but not without making a reasonable mark on the city. In 1869, he was elected Alderman of the 3rd ward, and helped finance a ‘People’s Party’ movement in 1873. The party platform mostly revolved around opposition to Blue Laws which required tavern closures on Sunday. The blue laws, and the opposition to them were the chief reason the 1873 mayoral election went to Harvey Doolittle Colvin (at least, according to Bob Skolnik in his book Beer, A History of Brewing in Chicago).
Not all of McAvoy’s political career was transparent actions that ultimately boosted sales of McAvoy’s Bock, he was also elected President of the Chicago City Council in 1871, just two short months after the fire. McAvoy’s speech after receiving the position is good, and quoted verbatim in the Tribune,
McAvoy's Speech, just 2 months after the Great Chicago Fire
McAvoy served as council president under the mayorship of Joseph Medill, the same mayor he would help unseat 2 years later during the kerfuffle over blue laws. Doing the research for these articles read like a listing of Chicago streets and institutions, Medill, Sheridan, Hoyne – I’m not sure if the streets were named after these men because of their involvement in reconstruction, or years later – regardless, the articles read like road atlases.
The brewery was sold to an English syndicate in 1889, leading the way for mass consolidation of Chicago breweries (then the 4th largest brewing city in the US) under British syndicates. McAvoy stayed on as the general manager of the company until his death in 1893. During prohibition, the brewery shifted gears and started production of alcohol based children’s medicine (McAvoy Malt Marrow builds strong children!). Skilnik’s book implies that many of the Chicago breweries also produced beer for the Torrio / Capone rackets, but doesn’t come out and say that McAvoy brewing was involved. I don’t know when the company officially folded, there’s a post-prohibition mention in the Tribune that the brand was going to be revived, but I can’t find any mention of them after that.
The research for this project was pretty interesting. I have a small list of sources for all of this information, most of it is from the Tribune (through the CPL search tool), with the general story of Chicago brewing filled in by Skilnik’s wonderful book. Most of the pre-prohibition Chicago breweries are gone, and very few of them are remembered on Wikipedia. At least the one with my last name attached to it (again, no relation) gets some recognition now, even if it’s a bit stubby.
