Forgotten Brewery Caves - Mayville Wisconsin Part Three....and it's a doozy.

Today's Forgotten Brewery Caves post deals with one of the more difficult variations, the offsite storage cave.  These are not common.  I'd say they are about 10% of known caves, and mostly occur in places where either appropriate geology is hard to find, or where a brewery radically outgrows its initial site. 

Welcome to Mayville Wisconsin, April of 2021.

The property owner of this house was getting ready to sell, and became curious about three odd cellars that were under/behind it.  Eventually this question was posed to me, and I was more than happy to run over and have a look.

There are several maps that show the ownership of this parcel of land as far back as 1860.  It is part of "Henninger's Addition" to Mayville, and in fact Henniger did own it at some point.  As John Henniger had started a brewery in 1855 over across town, he is the clear favorite when it comes to the question of who was using this space. Unhelpfully the two maps from the 1870's show no structures and have it owned by people with no clear association with the three local breweries.  Although of interest and I think significance the next listed owner of Henniger's brewery, a man named Kroesing, had a nice house just across the little valley.  He would have had a clear view of this property.

The first structure of which there is record appears on an 1885 "Birdseye View".  These documents tend to be vivid but sometimes inaccurate, but for what it's worth, here's the site:

It's a substantial building, but lacking chimneys and such does not suggest a brewery.  As we shall see, there was certainly something there before - and after - this presumed residence.

The property owner had been told that there was a fire, and a rebuild on the existing foundations starting in 1890 and proceeding in stages, one floor at a time, into the 1920's.  So, what's there today and how do the puzzle pieces fit together?

Here I am standing in front of the chronologically hodge-podge but really rather nice house in 2021.

To the right of the house there is a flat section of wall built into the hillside.  And a door.

A couple of observations.  The jarring lack of symmetry struck me right away.  At this point I did not know that there were three doors, only that there darn well ought to be.  The pattern of brewery caves with three entrances is a recurring one.  I've seen it in St. Paul Minnesota, Hudson Wisconsin and several other locations.  Including per our last post, one of the other Mayville breweries.  The relationship of the wall with the doors and the presumably later house foundation is curious.  The front wall of the cave system is approximately the back foundation of the house, but there are some hints that the two may in fact be of similar age.  Is it possible that the 1885 house was built on the foundations of an ice house/atrium that was in front of the caves from their presumed construction in the early 1860's?  Well, lets step inside.

This is the interior of what we'll call chamber 1, on the right side as you face the house.  The walls are a bit stained but the structure is solid.  That odd rectangle at the top of the back wall is an air vent.  We'll return to that presently.

Here's the reverse view, looking from chamber one back up the stairs.

The placement of doors off the center line is unusual.  And the steps, while modern are also an oddity.  Why not just put the door lower?  I suspect there were ramps in the old days.

There are of course short passages connecting the three chambers.  Here's the center chamber, or number 2.  It's in better shape.

Nicely white washed walls and floor.  Another vent in the back wall.  The dog of the household tagged along for my tour and at various points started barking furiously and running back and forth.  Perhaps the structure is haunted.  From this perspective I turn 180 degrees to show...

Another off center door, this one going into the house.  Again there are modern steps.  And up above them is something quite interesting.

The space above the stairs goes up to this structure which has a wooden hatch going to the outside world.  I believe this to be an entryway for ice to be put into the caves.  We'll have a look at the outside in a bit.  This is fairly strong evidence that there was some kind of structure above the caves, either a little shed of these dimensions or a larger ice house.

Here's a neat little detail, a hinge for the door that once closed off chamber 2 from the last chamber.  

I think we can actually skip chamber 3.  It's in worse condition but is otherwise identical to the ones I've already shown you.  In that chamber the door to the house is sealed off with modern cinderblock.

Let's step into the spring sunshine again for a moment.  Here's the back of the house...

See the hatch near the front bumper of the blue car?  We've seen that from the other side, and I think this is much older than the modern blocks would suggest.  Is that little projection built on the foundations of an earlier ice house?  It's hard to see any reason for it being built after the caves were constructed.  For your usual household ice needs you don't require a hatch to drop big blocks down into the basement.  On the other side of the driveway we find this:

This is one of the vents at the back of the three chambers.  This one has an elevated ceramic pipe, which would hopefully keep runoff from flooding down below in a heavy rain.  But ironically this is to the rather moist chamber 1.  Chamber 2 is much drier but its vent is flush with the ground.  The pipe by the way is modern but likely duplicates what must have been over these vents when the caves were in use.  Probably with a more waterproof top.  Here you can see how the vents, and therefore the back walls of the chambers, line up with the driveway.

There were a number of nagging questions in all of this, and I don't think I've put them all to rest yet.  Those vents for instance.  On a hillside they must flood the chambers with rainwater regularly.  Yet they were fairly dry, especially the center chamber.  This leads me to believe that the cement floors are not as old as they look, and that in fact there is still some kind of functioning drain system underneath.  Indeed, when puzzling this over I suggested that there might be a pipe running away from the house and was told that indeed, in direct line with the center chamber there is a spot in the lawn that is always sinking in and needs refilling often!  Surely the tail end of the drain system or a broken pipe part way along.

Another thing bothered me a bit.  This was such an ideal spot for a brewery.  Hillside caves, edge of town, nice little creek at the bottom of the hill.  Could this be the enigmatic fourth Mayville brewery that is hinted at in records?  Caspar Maedder was a brewmaster for the brewery on Main street, and seems to have had his own brewery in the late 1850's and early 60's.  But his name does not appear on the 1860 map of this area, and with Henninger definitely owning the land at some point it seems a long shot that a fourth brewery would be on this site....and not show on the maps.  A storage cave might not get noticed.  A brewery would.  Yet the 1872 and 1876 maps don't show any structures.

The property did have other identified owners.  A man named John Muzzy in 1860, and a Charles Spiering in 1876.  Were one or both of them investors in the Henninger brewery?  Or did Henninger just lease the caves?  At one point in the late 1860's Henninger seems to have actually owned the Main street brewery having perhaps sold the one he started circa 1865.  Could this cave have stored beer for both breweries?  It should be noted that brewery ownership records are fallible and quirky.  See the prior example of Herr Gerlach buying up the competing Darge brewery in our first installment.

Another problem is that certainly the Main street brewery and most likely Henninger's original brewery on the North side of town actually had their own caves.  Did growth of the breweries require more storage space?  I actually know of one or two instances of competing breweries sharing storage cave space.  Hastings/Ninninger, Minnesota being an example of limited geology, and if the rumors about Menomonie Wisconsin are correct this may be another instance of apparent competitors being covertly cooperating. 

This is not the first time I've pondered the reason for having three caves lined up like this.  I have theorized that perhaps the center one was for the ice and that sufficed to keep beer cold in the adjacent chambers.

I do have to concede that there is a small chance that these caves were not for beer, all the classic features notwithstanding.  Henninger also ran a butcher shop.  Any chance that the many hooks in the ceiling of the cave were actually for hanging up sides of beef?

I'm going with no on that one.  These caves are sizable and a bit damp.  That's great for a product that can tolerate being damp and that gets better with prolonged storage.  Lager beer?  Oh yes.  Sides of beef hanging around for weeks to months?  Hmmmm, not such a strong marketing concept.

Many thanks to the property owner for letting me study this fascinating site.  It has helped me answer some vexing questions.  While of course creating new ones.

In the interest of completeness here's the 1876 view of the Henninger, now Kroesing brewery on the other side of town.  Certainly enough room to have caves there.  So why bother to haul beer elsewhere?