Telling Whiskey History in Tell City (Part 4)

 

Some of Park & Tilford's fine perfumes.

When David Schulte bought Old Overholt in the middle of Prohibition, he didn’t want the Pennsylvania distillery. That was worthless. He wanted its 35,000 barrels of aging whiskey along with the license that allowed him to sell that whiskey as medicine. Schulte paid $4.5M for Overholt and sold it to the Wathen brothers’ American Medicinal Spirits Company (AMS) for $7.7M. AMS was the biggest seller of medicinal whiskey and would go on to become the biggest component of National Distillers.

Then Schulte went after another Prohibition loophole, fragrances. As Prohibition Commissioner Roy Haynes helpfully pointed out, alcohol had “hundreds of uses and only one is outlawed.” Prohibition led, almost overnight, to a tripling of industrial alcohol production. Suddenly, Park and Tilford was a major perfume manufacturer. Millions of gallons of industrial alcohol were diverted and illegally transformed into ‘whiskey,’ ‘gin,’ and other concoctions based on flavoring neutral spirit.

Schulte's Park and Tilford was not the only company that did this, allegedly. Schulte managed to stay on the right side of the law and transitioned into legal whiskey-making after Repeal. He also remained a major perfume manufacturer. 

In 1938, Schulte opened an office in Louisville and began to buy distilleries. He acquired Louisville’s Bonnie Brothers, Krogman in Tell City, the Woodford County Distillery in Midway, Kentucky; the Hamburger Distillery in Brownsville, Pennsylvania; and the Owings Mills Distillery in Gwyn Falls, Maryland. They all operated under the Park and Tilford banner.

Park and Tilford kept Krogman going for about 20 years. People in the industry usually referred to it as Park and Tilford or Tell City, but it was always Krogman to locals. 

Several Beam family members worked at Schulte’s distilleries. Roy Beam, one of Joe Beam's seven distiller sons, was the distiller responsible for all Park and Tilford plants. He was based at Bonnie Brothers in Louisville. 

Roy hired his brother Otis to run Tell City. Roy’s son, Charles Lloyd ‘Charlie’ Beam, also worked at Krogman. Charlie would go on to work for Seagram’s, where he created the Eagle Rare bourbon brand. He finished his Seagram’s career as distiller at Four Roses in Lawrenceburg. In 2010 he was inducted (posthumously) into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame.

David Schulte died in 1949, leaving Park and Tilford in the hands of his two sons. They sold it to Schenley, then the country’s largest whiskey company, in 1954. It took a few more years for Schenley to decide Krogman was excess capacity. The property was acquired by the city government and is today part of Tell City’s sewage treatment plant. 

Krogman shut down for good in the 1960s. Tell City's other claim to fame, the Tell City Furniture Company, closed in 2012. Antique shops in Tell City and vicinity sell stoneware jugs and other Krogman collectibles, as well as vintage Tell City furniture.

Today Tell City (pop. 7,272) is the seat of Perry County (pop. 19,170). It celebrates Swiss heritage with an annual festival in August. Visitors can enjoy its scenic riverfront park and historic downtown. Nearby is the Hoosier National Forest.

(This is Part 4 and the conclusion. If you'd like to start with Part 1, go here.)