April 12, 2008...8:49 am
Chapter 5
Johann “Adam” Lemp was born in 1798 in Germany. He arrived in the United States in 1836 and settled in St. Louis in 1838, opening a grocery store in downtown St. Louis. Besides typical groceries, Lemp also made his own beer, and by 1840 he focused solely on the brewing and sale of the beer, forming a company he named Western Brewery.
His light golden lager was a welcomed change from the darker beers that were sold at the time. Eventually sales became so strong that a larger storage space was needed to house the barrels of beer, and a cave in south St. Louis was used for this purpose because it provided natural refrigeration. Wagons were sent to the frozen river just a few blocks away to chip away ice and bring back to keep the caves at a constant temperature. These caves were under the very ground that Atman was now standing on outside the mansion.
Adam’s son William J. Lemp was born in Germany in 1836 and after completing his education at St. Louis University, he began work at the Western Brewery under his father. He soon left the company to form a partnership with another brewer. In 1862 Adam Lemp died, leading to William’s return to the Western Brewery as owner and operator. In 1864 he began a huge expansion of the brewery by building a larger warehouse above the lagering caves.
Soon, the Western Brewery was the largest brewery in St. Louis, brewing and bottling its beer in the same facility which was a rarity at that time and an example of William’s sense of innovation in business, particularly to meet a growing demand. William was also responsible for installing the first refrigeration machine in an American brewery, and he extended the idea to refrigerated railway cars. His beer soon became the first beer in the U.S. with a national reach. Lemp Beer would soon be sold worldwide.
In 1868, Jacob Feickert, William Lemp’s father-in-law, built a house right above the lagering caves. In 1876 William Lemp purchased it for his family, utilizing it as both a residence and as offices for the brewing company. While the home was already impressive, Lemp immediately began renovating and expanding the thirty-three room house into a Victorian showplace. From the mansion, a tunnel was built from the basement through the caves to the brewery. An underground theatre and swimming pools heated with hot water from the breweries were also built in the caves underground.
In 1892, the William J. Lemp Brewing Company was founded from the Western Brewery with William as President and William Jr. as Vice-President. William J. “Billy” Lemp, Jr. was born on August 13, 1867. Like his father, he went to St. Louis University and then studied the art of brewing. However it was Frederick Lemp, the fourth son born in 1873 who William Sr. was hoping to hand the company off to. But a myriad of health problems ended Frederick’s life on December 13, 1901 at the age of 28.
William Sr. was crushed by this and slowly deteriorated. On the morning of February 13, 1904 he shot himself in the head in his upstairs bedroom. After the death of his brother and father, Billy Lemp Jr. took over as president of the company in 1904. Inheriting the family business and a vast fortune, Billy and his wife immediately moved into the mansion and began spending the inheritance on clothing, carriages, servants, and art.
Billy was busy running the brewery during the day and pursuing all manner of decadent activities during the night. Holding lavish parties in the caves below the mansion, he would bring in numerous prostitutes for the “entertainment” of his friends. Enjoying the heated swimming pools and free flowing beer, his friends who attended were known to enjoy a high time in the earth below. Billy was quite arrogant and often ate and slept with a gun on the table or under his pillow. The divorce from his first wife in 1908 was highly publicized in the local papers.
By 1910, The Lemp Brewery was suffering. Billy’s reduced interest had decreased sales. Instead of keeping up with new brewery innovations, he let the brewery decline. He spent his time building a country home on the river, and also remodeled the family mansion. When Prohibition began in 1919, rather than keeping the brewery going, he simply gave up and shut the plant down without notice. Workers were not even told until they showed up one day for work and found the doors locked.
The individual family members were already extremely wealthy, and had no interest in maintaining the very business that had made them so rich. The beer trademark was sold to a friend. The brewery itself was eventually sold at auction to the International Shoe Company for just under 600,000 dollars although it was well worth seven million dollars before prohibition. These events depressed Billy. On December 13, 1922 he shot himself in the heart in his front office.
Atman had been fingering the key to the mansion in his gloved hand ever since the Cadillac brought him across the river. He unlocked the double doors and slowly pushed them open. He stepped inside the foyer and gazed up the main staircase, his eyes adjusting to the dark very quickly. The house was pitch black inside and quiet, but Atman could feel that it was indeed bustling with activity. He looked through the entrance to a room on his right and saw a beautiful grand fireplace on the far wall, and another through the entrance to the room on his left. The room to Atman’s left had been Billy’s office.
Atman could make out a figure in the dark sitting at a table beneath a grand painting of a woman dressed in lavender. He turned and walked into the room, approaching the figure at the table without fear.
“Hello, Billy.”
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