116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Time Machine: Union Brewery
Iowa City landmark building, opened in 1867, still stands
Simeon Hotz built the Union Brewery at Linn and Market streets in Iowa City, at what is today Brewery Square at 123 N. Linn St., in 1867, just after the Civil War.
His son-in-law, Antone Geiger, was his partner, and the company’s bookkeeper was Chris Senner, a native of Germany — remember that name because he shows up later.
The “History of Johnson County from 1836 to 1882” described the brewery: “Main building 160 feet long by 50 feet wide and a three-story brick building with cellar under the entire building, with a brewing capacity of 50 barrels a day, property worth $50,000. Building heated by steam. He employs an average of 10 men.”
A saloon, with sawdust on the floor, was set up in a corner of the brewery to accommodate many who stopped by for a beer.
Hotz’s daughter, Anne, married the brewery foreman, Conrad Graf, in 1875.
After Geiger died in 1876, Graf and Joseph Schultz ran the brewery for a year before Hotz stepped back in. When Hotz died in 1881, the brewery was managed by his estate, with Graf in charge.
In 1884, Iowa became a dry state, and the brewery closed. In 1893, Iowa lawmakers adopted a mulct law, basically a licensing tax that allowed liquor establishments to pay the state a sum of money and continue selling alcohol.
After that law went into effect, “one of the largest real estate deals on record in Iowa City was consummated,” when Graf bought the Union Brewery from the Hotz & Geiger estate, The Gazette reported. Graf paid $20,000 — around $600,000 in today’s dollars — for the brewery and 40 acres of timberland.
Graf reopened the brewery and operated it on a smaller scale until he died a year later, on Nov. 1, 1894.
Marriage, growth
Graf’s widow, Anne, ran the brewery until Senner, the brewery’s former bookkeeper, returned to Iowa City and became its manager in 1896. Shortly after that, Senner and Anne married. Under Senner’s management, the brewery’s annual output increased to 10,000 barrels. The bottling works produced 100 cases of beer a day.
The Iowa City Press Citizen reported in 1899 that the brewery’s Pilsner and Export keg and bottled beers were “distinguished for richness of flavor and exceptional purity, which is obtained by the absolute genuineness of the ingredients entering into the composition of their products. This beer is consumed locally, and shipments are made throughout this and surrounding counties.
“The Union Brewery also conducts a large bottling works, where all kinds of carbonated goods are made, such as ginger ale, soda water, etc., also manufacture and wholesalers of liquid gas for soda fountains. It is greatly due to the present management, which is under Mr. Chris Senner, that the Union Brewery stands in the front ranks among enterprises of this nature.”
On the morning of April 1, 1903, Senner retired from management and turned over the business to his three stepsons — Simeon, Otto and William Graf, the sons of Conrad Graf. The brewery then became commonly known as the Graf Brewery.
The three also took over the Iowa City Mineral Springs Bottling Works from their mother, Anne.
The Graf brothers immediately began refitting the brewery office with new furniture and added a private office. In addition, a Sternewirth, a hospitality center that provided beer to visitors and employees, was connected to the brewery. The bottling department and storage room were enlarged, and a new product, Golden Brew, was introduced.
In 1905, Emil Gartzke became chief brewer at the Graff Brewery after learning the craft at Hantke’s Brewers School in Milwaukee. J.J. Clark was the brewery’s engineer from 1906 to 1912.
Prohibition
When Iowa again adopted Prohibition in 1917 — three years before the nation went dry — Gartzke returned to Milwaukee to learn how to make non-alcoholic beverages.
The brewery building was sold to Mississippi Valley Rubber Co. to make pneumatic tires and rubber goods. Economy Advertising bought the brewery building in 1923.
The bottling business — for soft drinks — moved from the brewery to 218 N. Linn St. and became Graf Bottling Works.
Gartzke’s son, Herb, in a 1987 Gazette interview, recalled washing bottles at the brewery.
“I spent a lot of time there as a kid,” he said. “I was a senior in high school when I helped wreck the brewery. We cut (up) those big copper kettles. I saved a lot of stuff out of it, thermometers, bottles.”
The brewery building was restored and became the home of an office/retail complex called Brewery Square in 1986, the same year the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The tunnels
Like other breweries, the Union/Graf brewery building had tunnels and caves beneath it for the storage and aging of brews.
In 1950, explorers ventured down a 36-foot ladder into the cobwebby tunnels that ranged in depth from 60 feet to 100 feet. Water covered the cobblestone floors.
A few aging vats had been left behind when the brewery went out of business. An Economy Advertising supervisor said the tunnels had been considered for use as an air raid shelter during World War II.
In 1978, Iowa City historian Irving Weber described the brewery tunnels: “Two of the original basement rooms are just as they were when the brewery ceased operations in 1916 when Iowa went ‘dry.’ One of them in a sub-basement, with an arched ceiling, served as the bottling room. … The other very large room in a sub-basement, some 30 feet below the basement, was used for aging beer.”
Interest in the cellars beneath the brewery grew after 2000 when developer Marc Moen acquired the building. Moen and State Archaeologist Marlin Ingalls visited the underground caverns, with Moen assessing whether they might become a tourist attraction.
Archaeologists returned to the caves in 2023 armed with 3D laser scanners, using LIDAR technology to map the tunnels.
Comments: D.fannonlangton@gmail.com
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