6. There Was a Cooperative Brewing Company in New York

A beer delivery wagon for Pabst company on Fifth Avenue near 70th Street. Photo from Library of Congress.

The Consumers’ Brewing Company of New York was a cooperative company, and as recounted in a 1908 report, one of the largest of its kind in the United States supplying an “annual demand of over 250,000 barrels” with a staff of 120 people. Above is its brewery on 54th Street which the New York Times described architecturally as a “tipsy extravaganza of mansards, towers and a great central dome.” In Brooklyn, a similar endeavor, the Consumers Park Brewing Company was formed by a group of hotel and saloon keepers and remnants can still be seen today.