Ulmer All Over
Born in Wurttemberg in 1833, William Ulmer immigrated to New York in the 1850s to work with his two uncles, Henry Clausen Sr. and John F. Betz, in the brewing industry, eventually becoming the brewmaster for Clausen’s very successful New York firm. In 1871, Ulmer partnered with Anton Vigelius to form the Vigelius & Ulmer Continental Lagerbier Brewery on Belvidere and Beaver Streets in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Born in Bavaria, Anton Vigelius immigrated to Brooklyn in 1840 at the age of 18 and was involved in the produce business prior to opening the brewery. He purchased land at the corner of Beaver and Belvidere Streets from Abraham and Anna Debevoise in 1869. In 1877 Vigelius sold his share of the brewery to Ulmer. The building ceased to be used as a brewery at the dawn of Prohibition in 1920. Though compromised by time, its arched windows and details such as tie-rod caps stand the test of time. Currently awaiting true renovation, it’s home to offices and light manufacturing. Local “street artists” continue to tag its bottom floors.
On nearby Belvidere Street is one of my favorite buildings in Brooklyn and I never fail to pay a visit whenever I’m around here, and you should too, if you like incidental attractive architecture. I got this photo around 2010, when the late Newtown Creek and railroad chronicler Bernard Ente was accompaying me. A “mansarded, cast-iron crested house” and a “Little Italianate castle of brick and terra cotta” with an ornate driveway gate over Belgian blocks and a courtyard, wagon house stable in the rear, this is the former offices of the nearby Ulmer Brewery complex. It has recently been owned by a stone sculptor and marble worker and later, furniture designer/restaurateur Zeb Stewart. In the central bay, molded terra-cotta ornaments “Office” and the brewery’s trademark “U” identify the building’s original function and owner. Note the then-current syle of maintaining a period after a title, even on a building front. “The New-York Times.” has lost both its hyphen and period over time.
The Ulmer Park branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, Harway and 26th Avenues, is named for an amusement park and beer garden opened in 1893 at the Bath Beach waterfront along Gravesend Bay by German immigrant beer baron William Ulmer as competition for Coney Island, but the venture never took off and it was closed during Prohibition (1920-1933). “Ulmer Park,” though, has inordinately survived as a place name, giving its name to a bus depot a few blocks away at Bath and 25th Avenues and this library.
Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)