Texas Brewing Company Gave Cowtown Very Near Beer

“On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Hops and Barley!” For beer drinkers of Fort Worth, the news must have seemed like Christmas in September.

And Jesse Shelton Zane-Cetti (1844-1922) must have looked like Santa Claus to beer drinkers as he strolled the streets of Fort Worth that month in 1890.

texas-brewing-contract-gazette In 1890 Zane-Cetti was one of four entrepreneurs who, declaring the artesian water of Fort Worth to be the finest in the state, built a brewery on the eastern edge of Hell’s Half Acre (thereby assuring an indigenous clientele). Zane-Cetti was vice president and secretary of the Texas Brewing Company. The contract for construction of the brewery was let on September 3, 1890. The brewery was located . . .

on Jones Street between 9th and 11th streets, where the Intermodal Transportation Center is today.

acre rusk cribs 2

The photo of Rusk (Commerce) Street at East 11th Street in Hell’s Half Acre appeared in 1906 in Purity Journal. It shows a brothel and a row of “cribs,” which were one-room shacks where “crib girls” (prostitutes) plied their trade. Texas Brewing Company can be seen in the background on Jones Street. (Photo from Dallas Historical Society.)

On the 1898 Sanborn map the brothel and cribs are labeled “FB” (for “female boarding,” a euphemism for “brothel”).

brewing 5-16-91By 1891 the brewery was brewing. On May 16 the Fort Worth Gazette reported that the brewery would begin selling its new beer on May 18—just in time for the German celebration that was then called “Maifest” and was held at Como Park, which was located east of town at the terminus of the Riverside streetcar line.

brewing 5-19The May 19 Gazette reported that fifty-six kegs of the indigenous brew were consumed on May 18 at Maifest.

This ad with an etching of the brewery was a common sight in Fort Worth newspapers.

texas brewing 1898 sanbornThe brewery covered almost five acres, produced its own water and electricity. It made its own barrels, had its own railroad tracks and cars.

TBC wet streets 9-17-93 dmnThe Texas Brewing Company allowed Fort Worth to wet not only its whistle but also its streets. Before streets were paved, they had to be sprinkled in dry weather to control dust. The brewery let the city have some of that fine artesian water to sprinkle the streets. Clip is from the September 17, 1893 Dallas Morning News.

brewery 1918This 1918 photo shows the brewery in the distance (D). Also visible are the Ford factory branch (A), the mystery hotel of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes (B), and the Natatorium (C).

The brewery was Fort Worth’s first big industry and a major employer (two hundred employees) before the Stockyards and packing plants were established. (Photos from Texas Historical Foundation.)

In 1904 the Texas Brewing Company’s Crown beer won a gold medal at the St. Louis World’s Fair.

brewing adBy 1907 the brewery claimed to be the biggest in the state, with a capacity of 250,000 barrels a year and 160 tons of ice a day, reducing the local cost of one hundred pounds of ice from a dollar to a quarter.

In 1908 the brewery introduced its Household beer, “a jolly good table beverage.” “Good nature reigns supreme at meal time when H. H. beer is served.”

In 1910 the brewery capitalized on an outbreak of typhoid fever by reminding readers that “typhoid germs cannot lurk in distilled water” such as that used in the brewery’s Household beer.

brewing tax actIn 1914 America was not yet at war, but countries that were at war were trading less with the United States. To compensate for the decreased revenues, Congress passed the Emergency War Tax Act. Clip is from the October 27 Star-Telegram.

The Texas Brewing Company had been founded at a time when the temperance movement was growing. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union had formed a local chapter by at least 1883. In 1902 “temperance hotels”—no liquor served—were “getting to be quite the thing” in town, the Fort Worth Telegram wrote. In 1907 the cities of Fort Worth and North Fort Worth held local option elections. The “wets” won, but the clock was ticking toward “last call” for brewers such as the Texas Brewing Company.

TBC 7-20-06 tdwTBC teel-total 7-14-05 tele

To hedge its bets in the growing atmosphere of temperance, Texas Brewing Company  marketed Tee-Total, which was a “temperance beer” or low-alcohol near-beer, in areas with local alcohol restrictions, such as Tulsa, Oklahoma. Uno and Ino were other temperance beers. Clips are from the July 29, 1906 Tulsa Daily World and July 14, 1905 Telegram.

Fast-forward to 1913. The clock was ticking faster now. In east Texas “dry” Democrat Morris Sheppard was elected to the U.S. Senate (tick). In 1917 Sheppard introduced the Senate resolution for the Eighteenth Amendment (tock). In 1919 he helped write the enforcing Volstead Act (tick).

In 1918, two years before Prohibition officially began, the Texas Brewing Company rolled out its last barrel and went bottoms up. The brewery became a bottling plant, selling ice and Shamrock brand “soda water.” The next year the brewery property was taken over by Devoe & Reynolds Company, which used the facility to brew a different kind of liquid: paints and varnishes.

Pa-tooey!

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9 Responses to Texas Brewing Company Gave Cowtown Very Near Beer

  1. Forest Ward says:

    I found a nice old advertisement printed on tin from the Texas brewery cr 1904 you should see . Full color and really beautiful !

  2. Dennis Hogan says:

    The WCTU was bound to cause a brew-ha-ha. Who knows what the ladies might have foamented!

  3. Frances S. says:

    We have a mystery photo of our grandfather in apron in front of a Saloon, which we think is the Ft. Worth Saloon. We don’t know in which city this saloon was located. Photo included.
    Saloon.jpeg

    • hometown says:

      Frances, I don’t think WordPress allows photos in comments. I could not find the photo. And e-mails to your sbcglobal.net address bounced back. If you like, leave another comment. Double-check the e-mail address or use a different one. I will be able to see it in private and will send you my e-mail address.

  4. Richard Woodman says:

    We have a old Texas Brewing Company tin sign salvaged and restored. It hangs on our wall. This article finally gives me the information I was searching for.

    • hometown says:

      What a great relic! I have seen very few such mementoes of the brewing company.

    • Dick Ramsey says:

      Another brewery collector just recently told me about your TBC article and I’m amazed as I have been compiling history and collecting TBC items for more than 35 years — glasses, bottles, coasters, postcards, signs, many ads, letters, TBC ledgers, etc. Would really like to know what sign Mr. Woodman has. Also, would like to know how some of the materials for the story were obtained. I’ve spent days, probably weeks in total, laboriously searching microfilm at the library and somehow missed a couple of the ads in this story. There must be an easier way to do TBC research?

    • hometown says:

      Mr. Ramsey, most of the information came from archived local newspapers and local history books. Most of the images came from archived local newspapers, city directories, Sanborn fire maps, a 1918 panoramic photo from the Library of Congress, etc. The last time I looked for the two photos credited to the Texas Historical Foundation, I could not locate them at the THF website. Dr. Richard Selcer’s Hell’s Half Acre has a good exterior photo from W. D. Smith.

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