Now you can enter the fabulous world of the Lemp family . . .Serving lunch and dinner. Featuring a murder mystery dinner and St. Louis' award-winning bed and breakfast. All this in one of Life Magazine's 10 most Haunted Houses in America.

Lunch Served:
Monday thru Friday
11:00 a.m. - 2:30 pm

Dinner Served:
Thursday - Saturday
5:30 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.

Sunday
Family Style Chicken Dinner
All You Can Eat
11:30 a.m. - 8:00 p.m..

 

Lemp's Grand Hall at The Lemp Brewery Stables & Wagon House

A Magnificent banquet hall with original hard maple floors. It is located at the corner of Lemp Ave. and Cherokee St.

Both the Lemp Mansion & Lemp's Crand Hall are available for banquets, parties and receptions of all kinds.

Call (314) 664-8024 for information.

America's First Lager Beer Brewers

When John Adam Lemp arrived in St. Louis from Eschwege, Germany in 1838, he seemed no different from the thousande of other immigrants who poured into the Gateway to the West during the first half of the 19th century. Lemp originally sought his fortune as a grocer. But his store was unique for its ability to supply an item sold by none of his competitors - lager beer. Lemp had learned the art of brewing the effervescent beverage under the tutelage of his father in Eschwege, and the natural cave under St. Louis provided the perfect temperature for aging beer. Lemp soon realized that the future of lager beer in America was as golden as th brew itself, and in 1840 he abandoned the grocery business to build a modest brewery at 112 S. Second Street. A St. louis industry was born. The brewery enjoyed marvelot success and John Adam Lemp died a millionaire.

William J. Lemp succeeded his father as the head of the brewery and he soon built it into an industrial giant. In 1864 a new plant was erected at Cherokee Street and Carondolet Avenue. The size of the brewery grew with the demand for its product and it soon covered five city blocks. In 1870 Lemp was by far the largest brewery in St. Louis and the Lemp family symbolized the city's wealth and power. Lemp beer controlled the lion's share of the St. Louis market, a position it held until Prohibition. In 1892 the brewery was incorporated as the William J. Lemp Brewing Co. In 1897 two of the brewing industry's titans toasted each other when William Lemp's daughter, Hilda, married Gustav Pabst of the noted Milwaukee brewing family.

The Family

The demise of the Lemp empire is one of the great mercantile mysteries of S t Louis. The first major fissure in the Lemp dynasty occurred when Frederick Lemp, William's favorite son and the heir-apparent to the brewery presidency, died under mysterious circumstances in 1901. Three years later, William J. Lemp shot himself in the head in a bedroom at the family mansion, apparently still grieving the loss of his beloved Frederick. William J. Lemp, Jr. succeeded his father as president.

Tragedy continued to stalk the Lemps with startling ardor. The brewery's fortunes continued to decline until Prohibition (1919) closed the plant permanently. William Jr.'s sister, Elsa, who was considered the wealthiest heiress in St. Louis, committed suicide in 1920. On June 28, 1922, the magnificent Lemp brewery, which had once been valued at $7 million and covered ten city blocks, was sold at auction to International Shoe Co. for $588,500. Although most of the company's assets were liquidated, the Lemps continued to have an almost morbid attachment for the family mansion. After presiding over the sale of the brewery, William J. Lemp, Jr. shot himself in the same building where his father died eighteen years earlier. His son, William Lemp 111, was forty-two when he died of a heart attack in 1943. William Jr's. brother, Charles, continued to reside at the house after his brother's suicide. An extremely bitter man, Charles led a reclusive existence until he too died of a self-inflected gunshot wound. The body as discovered by his brother, Edwin.

In 1970, Edwin died of natural causes at the age of ninety.
 

Last updated: Friday, November 14, 2008