What Can this Picture Tell Us About Greendale Distillery?

 

Greendale Distillery; Greendale, Indiana; circa 1920.

Whiskey-making in America wasn’t fully industrialized until the final quarter of 19th century, but then it became very big very fast. This is clear from what we know, but hard data to quantify it is elusive. It is even harder to find detailed information about individual distilleries, especially those that disappeared without a surviving physical plant or brand. 

Prohibition is the reason for the paucity of public records, that and the stigma that attached to whiskey-making as a result. Many families covered up their involvement rather than preserve it.

But we can glean some facts from the limited information we have. This image is of the Greendale Distillery in Greendale, Indiana. (Most ‘Lawrenceburg’ distilleries were actually in the adjacent town of Greendale.) We know that after the Whiskey Ring scandal of 1871-76, whiskey production for the greater Cincinnati area became concentrated in Lawrenceburg-Greendale.

This image is taken from a 1920 warehouse receipt. Many distilleries of that era had similar detailed line drawings of their facilities on their letterhead, stock certificates, warehouse receipts, and other documents. After Prohibition, picture postcards of similar images became common. Many of both have survived. By comparing these pre-Prohibition drawings to Sanborn Maps, post-Prohibition postcards, and surviving structures, we see the 19th century drawings were generally accurate, not fanciful nor aspirational. 

The purpose of these images was, perhaps, to assure customers that they were doing business with an actual distillery and not a broker or other intermediary. For us, they can tell us things about the distillery we don’t get from the existing meager record.

Stitzel-Weller Distillery, post-Prohibition picture postcard. 

For example, although Greendale was a small community compared to Cincinnati, this is the configuration of an urban distillery, reflective of the ‘reformed’ industry post-scandal. Everything is close together on a large city block. Although not shown, it is likely there were similar facilities on either side. We know the Squibb Brothers distillery was adjacent to Greendale, as they were combined into a single plant after Prohibition.

Greendale wants us to know it is a modern and substantial distillery. The artist made it a point to show paved roads with automobile traffic on the block’s two visible sides, with sidewalks and curbs. The locomotive visible middle-left tells us a railroad runs through it. (Notice that a train is also depicted on the much later Stitzel-Weller postcard.) 

The large building left-front is clearly the main one. It may be offices, at least a sales room, with the distillery behind. One of the towers is probably an elevator, the other the column still. The stacks indicate boilers.

The two buildings in the center are maturation warehouses, likely holding 18-20,000 barrels each. The long, low buildings at the upper left are probably bottling and finished-goods storage. 

The building on the right is harder to figure. It appears to be two-story with no windows downstairs, which suggests some sort of storage or processing as opposed to offices. Cistern room? New barrel staging? Many distilleries of this era had large machine shops for fabrication and repairs. They were, in some ways, more self-sufficient that the mega-distilleries of today.

We can't tell much about the low buildings on the right, except that the plant is using every inch of its real estate.

What have we learned from this picture? That Lawrenceburg-Greendale was very much like Louisville or Peoria in its urban concentration of large, industrial whiskey manufacturers. How large? We have a record that says Squibb Brothers Distillery, next door, was mashing 330 bushels per day in 1885. That comes out to about 10,000 barrels per year. If the two obvious maturation warehouses are it, and hold about 40,000 barrels, and they’re selling 4-year-old whiskey, those numbers work.

It's a lot of speculation and a shame we have to guess at these things, but at least every picture tells a story, don’t it?