Eberhard Anheuser bought a struggling brewery here in 1852, and the Anheuser-Busch Brewery grew into one of the largest in the United States. The site dates to 1852, when German immigrant Eberhard Anheuser acquired a struggling brewery. His son-in-law, Adolphus Busch — a masterful businessman who emigrated from Germany in 1857 — transformed it into a national empire.
Busch was the first American brewer to pasteurize beer, the first to use refrigerated railcars for distribution, and the creator of Budweiser, introduced in 1876 and named for a city in Bohemia. At the time, German immigrants were the most numerous ethnic group in St. Louis, and lager beer was their cultural contribution to American life. The brewery complex sprawling before you is a marvel of Gilded Age industrial architecture: brick Romanesque Revival buildings with ornate details, stables that once housed the famous Clydesdale horses, a Brew House with a copper-domed brew kettle visible through its windows.
During Prohibition from 1920 to 1933, the company survived by pivoting to malt syrup, truck bodies, and a soft drink called Bevo. The day Prohibition ended, Adolphus Busch III sent a case of Budweiser to President Franklin Roosevelt by truck.