Henry F. Ortlieb Company Bottling House
Written by April Frantz in the A Place in Time category and the Summer 2015 issue Topics in this article: architecture and architects, breweries and brewing, Henry F. Ortlieb Co., International Style (architecture), National Register of Historic Places, Paul Philippe Cret, Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office, Philadelphia, Richard Koelle
The upper level of the Bottling House, circa 1950, soon after operations began. Conveyors carried the filled cases from the second floor to the ground-floor loading docks. Ortlieb Family
The Henry F. Ortlieb Company was once one of the largest beer brewers in Philadelphia. Founded by the Ortlieb family in 1869, the brewery grew considerably in the early 20th century as their market expanded. In 1948 the company’s final major building – the Bottling House – was completed to incorporate state-of-the-art bottling technology into the facility. Although most of the impressive brewery complex was recently demolished, the Bottling House has started a new life as a home for KieranTimberlake, a Philadelphia-based architecture firm recognized for its environmental ethos, research expertise, and pioneering design and planning. In order to relocate to the vacant Bottling House, KieranTimberlake launched an intensive rehabilitation project to adapt the building for their needs while retaining as much of the original character and materials as possible. The project was made possible in part by the federal Rehabilitation Investment Tax Credit program, administered in Pennsylvania by PHMC’s Bureau for Historic Preservation.
The Bottling House features International Style influences, showcasing the distinctive design characteristics of post–World War II industrial buildings in the Philadelphia region, including horizontal massing, asymmetrical organization, ribbons of metal-frame windows, red brick with exposed concrete trim, and large-scale signage in a sans serif font.
The Philadelphia region adapted the International Style for industrial and institutional buildings a bit differently than in other geographic areas. Key to this regional distinction was the influence of University of Pennsylvania architecture professor Paul Philippe Cret (1876–1945) and the local tendency to retain continuity with the past. The result was the widespread use of brick – a material dominant across the city – as an exterior treatment. The vast majority of International Style buildings in the Philadelphia region, both before and in the first decades after World War II, used the city’s traditional material palette: red brick with light-colored trim (usually concrete instead of earlier stone), with comparatively little use of the glass curtain walls otherwise typical of the style.
The upper level of the Bottling House today, now the home of architecture firm KieranTimberlake. The clerestory windows and skylights are once again operable for efficient ventilation and natural light. KieranTimberlake
The Bottling House is attributed to Cret student Richard Koelle (1913–93), whose family’s firm began designing Ortlieb Brewery buildings in 1913. The building appears to have been designed to convey its identity as a modern plant while retaining a visual connection to adjacent earlier Ortlieb buildings. Designs like these adopted new International Style approaches without rejecting earlier Philadelphia building traditions, embracing the new while maintaining a connection to the past.
Beer as a factory product essentially began in Philadelphia’s Brewerytown neighborhood in the 1840s. These larger-scale facilities set a precedent that ended the small brewery-saloons in the post–Civil War period (until the creation of the brewpub model more than 100 years later). The industrial growth and consolidation of brewing in Philadelphia in the second half of the 19th century paralleled the city’s rise in the same period as the “Workshop of the World.”
When Henry F. Ortlieb (1869–1936) took over the family brewery in 1894, it was producing a relatively small yield of 2,000 barrels annually. He began a campaign of modernization and expansion that continued through Prohibition and the Great Depression into the period after World War II. The result of his efforts transformed the small, local saloon-based business into one of the most successful producers of beer in the regional market.
Advances in refrigerated storage and transportation in the early 20th century meant that brewers who took advantage of these changes – like Henry Ortlieb – could reach wider markets. Although the start of Prohibition in 1920 posed a definite challenge for breweries, it did not entirely halt all production. The legal production of near beer and industrial alcohol, rental of cold storage facilities, and irregular enforcement of the federal law meant some companies were able to survive the 1920s and early 1930s. As Philadelphia brewers went back to legal manufacture of full-alcohol beer in 1933, the year of Prohibition’s repeal, Ortlieb was among the smaller of the city’s major breweries, operating at approximately one-fifth of the production volume of nearby Schmidt’s, the second-largest brewery in the state.
Ortlieb expanded considerably in the 1930s. In 1933 the company began the construction of new ale-making facilities, with the Koelle firm again serving as architects. This was followed by other expansions until 1940, when Ortlieb announced a capacity expansion of 200,000 barrels, or a 200 percent increase over the brewery’s 1932 output. In addition to bottles, Ortlieb began packaging beer in a recent innovation: six-pack cans. The Ortlieb brewery remained a family-run business until 1981, when it was sold to rival Christian Schmidt Brewing Company, then among the largest producers in the nation.
The Bottling House was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on August 5, 2014.
Recent listings in the National Register of Historic Places include C.F. Adams Building, Erie, Erie County; Edwin J. Schoettle Company Building, Philadelphia; Franklinville School, Whitpain Township, Montgomery County; Hotel Altamont, Hazelton, Luzerne County; Jenkintown Wyncote Train Station, Jenkintown, Montgomery County; Manchester School No. 3, Fairview Township, Erie County; Mount Zion A.M.E. Church, Tredyffrin Township, Chester County; Old Main at the Lutheran Home at Topton, Longswamp Township, Berks County; Pittsburgh Mercantile Company Building, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County; R&H Simon Silk Mill, Easton, Northampton County; and Washington Trust Company Building, Washington, Washington County.
The author acknowledges, as the basis for this article, the work of Emily Cooperman, who authored the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Bottling House.
April E. Frantz is a historic preservation specialist who coordinates the National Register Program for the eastern part of the state at PHMC’s Bureau for Historic Preservation.
