herr2ck: Gemütlichkeit

February 2026.

Nicholas Schlee’s brewery is unique in that it has some of the earliest intact buildings of the four major Columbus breweries, and it is also the only brewery with its entire complex still standing. Unlike the more functionalist Hoster Brewery, its buildings have a touch of Italianate flair.

The L. Hoster Brewing Company has various addresses, but it is east of Front Street in the Brewery District neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. The complex is bordered by Blenkner Street to the north, Beck Street and the Born Capital Bottling Works to the south, High Street to the east, and Front Street to the west.

History

Along with the Born Capital Brewery and L. Hoster Brewing Company, the Schlee Bavarian Brewery was also part of the German brewing tradition that defined the Brewery District neighborhood during the late 19th century. They were all located in the same area of town and operated by a single family that lived nearby. These breweries prospered together with the proximity of German immigrants in German Village, and they would also suffer the same fate with increased competition and the growing temperance movement in the first two decades of the 20th century.

A portrait of Nicholas Schlee from 1912. (Columbus Metropolitan Library)

Nicholas Schlee, the founder of the Schlee Brewery, had moved to Columbus in 1860 at the age of 24. He worked as a brewer in Germany, and his uncle George Schlegel, who operated the Schlegel & Blenkner Brewery, had died in 1856 of typhoid fever and Schlee replaced him as the brewery’s operator. Schlee had increased production by 400% over the course of just two years, and he quickly became a partner, eventually attaining sole ownership of the brewery in 1881. Schlee would go on to marry his uncle’s widow, Margaret Schlegel, and move into a home across Front Street. Just as Schlee’s brewery is the only completely intact complex remaining in Columbus, his house is the only one still standing among his competitors.

With the increased success of Schlee’s brewery, he purchased a city block on Front Street between Hoster Street and Beck Street in 1866. However, this location would make life slightly more difficult, as Schlee’s was the only brewery not directly connected to the railroad. He commissioned Columbus architect George H. Maetzel to design a new brewery building, which became known as the Bavarian Brewery. This building opened in 1875. Schlee would expand further with the demolition of the original Schlegel & Blenkner Brewery a block north for a malt house, which opened in 1883. In 1885, he purchased another former brewery and converted it to a boiler house, which would later be used for the brewery’s ice machines. The stables, on the northwest corner of Hoster Street and Wall Street, were completed in 1891. The final building in the complex was the bottling plant, which opened in 1896.

Schlee’s brewery was not the largest in Columbus (it was far outclassed by the larger and more productive L. Hoster Brewing Company), but he more readily embraced new technology. When the ice machines were added in 1890, a publication noted they were the first of their kind in the entire city. Schlee also lived in the Brewery District until his death, unlike his competitors, who had moved to Olde Towne East or German Village by the 1900s. Schlee also invested in ventures outside of his brewery, such as the Great Southern Hotel and the Schlee-Kemmler Building, which are located a few blocks north of the Brewery District on High Street.

With the beginning of the new century in 1900, smaller breweries were beginning to consolidate into larger conglomerates, as railroads and steel companies were. The Cleveland & Sandusky Brewing Company, which consisted of 14 breweries on Lake Erie consolidated in 1898, took an interest in the three major Columbus breweries (Hoster, Born, Schlee). In 1904, all three had agreed, and the owners ended up making far more than their assets were worth and saved on advertising, raw materials, and delivery. Hoster and Born would own a lot of the new company’s stock, while Schlee had sold his shares. This new company was established as the Hoster-Columbus Associated Breweries Company on December 30, 1904. In practice, each company’s signature beer was still produced at their own plant.

However, the good times of the 1890s and 1900s had begun to fade by the 1910s. The newly associated breweries began to face competition from outside Columbus, along with newly established Columbus breweries such as Franklin Brewing Company (1904), August Wagner’s Gambrinus Brewing Company (1906), Washington Brewing Company (1907), and Ohio Brewing Company (1910). This led to the consolidated breweries to not achieve projected revenue, and they struggled to reach their financial obligations. Coupled with the rising temperance movement in Ohio, with 57 of Ohio’s 88 counties becoming “dry” in 1908, the company had to close the Born brewery and Schlee bottling plant and focus on advertising and expansion.

In 1914, the individual breweries’ brands were discontinued, and the Gold Top brand was introduced and produced at the three remaining plants. Nicholas Schlee died that year, the last of the German “braumeisters,” which was another blow to the company. Additionally, the associated breweries had been operating in a deficit since they were combined, and they were placed in receivership at the end of the year. Schlee’s brewery was closed, and Hoster’s, the last holdout, was operated as the Hoster-Columbus company beginning in 1915. With the beginning of World War I, there was serious anti-German sentiment in Columbus, and Prohibition began in 1920, which caused production at the breweries to stop completely. August Wagner’s Gambrinus Brewery was the only one to survive by manufacturing soft drinks, which would remain operating until 1974.

Schlee’s sprawling complex would be subdivided after his death and the brewery’s closure, which I’ll detail in the “photos” section. It was restored along with other buildings in the Brewery District by NBBJ, which occurred between 1989 and 1990. The complex was also listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. The buildings have various uses today.

Photos

(NRHP listing)

Above is a handy map of the Schlee Brewery complex, which may be useful to use as a reference while reading.

Schlee House

1898 view of the Schlee House. (Wikimedia)

This Italianate house was the home of Nicholas Schlee and is the oldest building across the entire complex, dating to 1865. Its architect is unknown; it may have been built by Schlee himself. Schlee lived there until his death in 1914. His wife and stepchildren lived in their house until 1920, which was empty until the Germania Society acquired it in 1927. The Germania Society was founded as a turners (gymnasts) club in 1866, and they merged with the Germania Gesang Verein, a singers’ club, in the late 19th century. They still use the house today and serve as an organization that promotes German culture.

The house has been whitewashed and clad in stucco since the 1920s, and the interior has been heavily altered and modernized. An addition to the north was also built between 1962 and the late 1980s.

Even before its alterations, this was a very modest Italianate house. It is five bays wide with double-hung windows, which have small hood molds above. The hipped roof has a low pitch. More fanciful features such as roof lanterns or towers are absent.

The south side retains its brick exterior, and the carriage house stands to the west, though it is neglected:

Bavarian Brewery

The Bavarian Brewery building in 1987. (NRHP listing)

This is the oldest building in the complex directly related to brewing. The original portion was completed in 1875 by architect George H. Maetzel, which consists of an eastern section with a hipped roof and the middle six bays of the Front Street facade, which have slight decorative brickwork touches. Two wings to the north and south were built soon after, which form a continuous facade across Front Street. These originally had cross-gabled roofs for decoration, which have since been removed. Some smaller additions were also built along the east side, which mostly dated to the mid-20th century, though one incorporated a 19th-century wall. These were demolished after 1987 but before 2007, likely during these buildings’ renovation in 1989 and 1990.

A view of the east side of the Bavarian Brewery, showing the demolished additions and remnants of the decorative cross gable. (NRHP listing)

The exterior is brick, while the interior has a structure of cast iron columns and wooden beams. After the brewery closed, it was used as a coffee and spice warehouse by the Andrus Schoffield Co. between c. 1920-1950, and the Sterling Wholesale Paper Warehouse from then until 1987. Underground, stone cellars were used for beer storage, which have since been adaptively reused as an event venue known as the Graystone Wine Cellar.

View from the corner of Front and Beck, looking northeast:

Detail of the segmentally arched windows on the central bays, with their brick hood molds:

The northern wing:

The windows are more regular here, minus the three central openings on the third floor, which are 1.5x the height for some reason.

Main entrance, with a limestone border:

The southern and eastern facades, which lack the decorative hood molds:

Note the masonry anchors along the stem of the “T” (the little metal stars):

Malt House/Buchsieb Block

Photo of the Malt House from the NRHP listing.

The malt house is the complex’s largest building, though it is also a hodgepodge of various additions like its southern neighbor, the Bavarian Brewery. The southern portion is the earliest, which was built in the 1870s as part of another brewery. When Schlee purchased it in 1885, it was a single story, but he converted it to a boiler room and added the northern wing at that time. Between 1887 and 1891, the second story was added, and it was then used to house the brewery’s ice machines.

The northern building, which has since been renamed to the Buchsieb Block, was built in 1883 as the malt house. It has several decorative touches that the other buildings lack, such as a fanciful bracketed cornice and even a relief of Nicholas Schlee above one of the doors. Both buildings have a brick bearing wall exterior and an interior structure of wood and iron.

After the brewery closed, the malt house was used by Columbus Railway, Power, & Light through the 1920s, though it was purchased by tanner Charles Buchsieb in 1919, and by 1925 he had acquired the entire block. Buchsieb used it to make fertilizer until the 1940s, and in 1950 the State of Ohio used it for storage. The boiler house/ice machine building was used by the Vollmer Electric Company for over 60 years, between 1922 and 1987. The brick exterior was obscured with an asphalt treatment known as Granulite before the late 1980s, which has been painted gray today.

The older boiler house/ice machine building:

The base has broad segmentally-arched windows, while the second story has small oxeye windows. Most of the ornamentation is built into the brick itself.

A view of the malt house/Buchsieb Block from the northwest corner of Front and Blenkner, in front of the Worly Building:

The cornice with supporting corbels, decorative gable on the center of the facade, and windows with hood molds are all ornamental details that are unusual among the more industrial buildings of the Brewery District. Granted, the ones that face Front Street have a bit more detail than the ones that do not. Some of the arched windows have been replaced by rectangular, more industrial openings.

The west facade:

I’m unsure if all this decoration is original, as Buchsieb’s plaque dates to his occupancy of the building beginning in the 1920s, and the datestone on the gable seems to use the same font. However, it is in stylistic harmony with the Italianate building. Here’s a closer look:

Note that the recessed brick panels are the same shape as the ones in the boiler house.

Relief of Nicholas Schlee above the main entrance:

East facade:

I wonder what this swinging metal arm was for. Possibly loading raw materials, given that it was a malt house.

Cast-iron fence and antique light pole, which may both be reproductions (I’m almost positive the light is):

I couldn’t get far enough away to get the north facade entirely:

Detail of the third-floor brickwork and cornice above:

Stables

1987 view of the stables. (NRHP listing)

The stables is my favorite building across the complex due to its unique decorative touches. It was built in 1891 to house the horses that would deliver Schlee’s finished product. Aside from the Granulite coating and taupe paint, the building retains its original cross gables and cupolas on top of the roof.

The window and door openings have hood molds with keystones, and there is a wide variety of shapes, such as the oxeye windows and segmental arches above the entrances. The bays have a decorative brick border below the roofline. The roof uniquely has three cupolas on top, possibly for ventilation, which are also common decorative touches in the Italianate style.

The south facade:

Larger east facade, which is expressed identically:

I think the little pulley above the second-floor window was used to pull up hay bales.

Fenestration pattern:

Even the garage next door has a cupola on top:

Bottling Plant

The Bottling Plant at the time of the NRHP listing.

The Bottling Plant was the final building completed in the Schlee complex, which was finished circa 1896. Its presence away from the main brewery and across Wall Street was due to a law at the time that required bottling plants to be built a certain distance away from breweries, as is the case with the Hoster and Born bottling plants, which are both across Front Street from their respective brewery sites. It was built after the Italianate style went out of vogue, but it still retains characteristics of the style, such as prominent vaulted windows with keystones. After the bottling plant closed, it was used as a commercial laundry beginning in the early 1920s. Additions to the building began in the mid-20th century, which extended the laundry eastwards towards High Street and added a garage on the north side.

The south facade:

Arched windows on the base:

One of the entrances:

Loving the extremely worn stone base.

Tall vaulted windows of the second floor, which have decorative borders that flow into each other:

A slightly redder shade of brick is used for these, along with stone impost blocks and keystones, though they don’t project from the wall. There is also a decorative border between the piers.

The west facade is much skinnier and is only four bays wide: