What Is This 118-year-old Building In Fresno? It Involves Beer, Vampires And A Murder

Uniquely is a Fresno Bee series that covers the moments, landmarks and personalities that define what makes living in the Fresno area so special.

Did you know that downtown Fresno once had a thriving brewery that covered 20 acres and employed 1,000 people?

Today, all that remains of the Fresno Brewing Co. is one 118-year-old building — used as an office and warehouse — that stands alone, popping out of the ground like the tip of a iceberg. Beneath the metaphorical surface, it’s connected to a treasure trove of history.

In addition to brewing beer that was served at almost every bar in town and shipped to two states, the brewery at the southern edge of downtown in an industrial neighborhood is a reflection of Fresno’s past and the country’s past.

Started in 1899 with the construction of a six-story building, it survived Prohibition by turning into an ice cream and soda factory — and may have had a “not-so-secret speakeasy.”

And its history was colorful, too. It made headlines for a murder-suicide in 1914 and one old newspaper story reported rowdy Sunday day drinkers “shocking every woman in the neighborhood.”

The Fresno Brewing Co. also became a lair for vampires (fictional ones, of course) when one local author was so captivated by the building he worked it into his book.

Years ago, Michael Birdsong, one of the co-founders of Tower District Historic Preservation Association, hosted tours through the building to cyclists as part of a “Bike through History” event.

People were amazed the building existed.

“It’s so off the beaten path,” he said. “People don’t even know it’s there unless you travel down to that district.”

Since this piece of history at 100 M St. is unknown to so many, we thought we’d take a deep dive into all its juicy history.

Fresno beer

The Fresno Brewing Co. is pictured in this undated photo by Fresno photographer Pop Laval. The office at left, built in 1907, is the only building left standing today. The six-story brewing building is in the middle, with another structure involved in the brewry on the far right.

At its height, the Fresno Brewing Co. had nine buildings, including one of the city’s first “skyscrapers” at six stories, just to the south of the existing building.

The company brewed and distributed beer throughout California and Nevada — a far bigger operation than downtown beer maker Tioga-Sequoia Brewing Co.

Fresno Brewing Co. made beers that sound like they could be on shelves today: Sierra Brew, Mt. Whitney Beer, Bohemian Beer.

But the ads for beer sure have changed. Consider this one for the Bohemian Beer than ran in the Fresno Morning Republican newspaper in 1911, where it was marketed for its purity: “Fresno Beer gives the clear skin and the ruddy bloom, the unfailing signs of robust, vigorous health. Instead of using coffee or tea, use Fresno Beer. It is better for you than either of them.”

The brewery had a laboratory, a bottling plant, a racking room and a stable (because beer was delivered by horse and wagon in the early 1900s).

In addition to getting a 5-cent glass of beer at bars around town, Fresno Brewing also distributed other beers, including Pabst Blue Ribbon and Schlitz.

Stuck in time

The Fresno Brewing Co.’s office, built in 1907, is relatively frozen in time with oak work stations, decorative pressed tin wall and ceiling panels, and a walk-in safe, in this Fresno Bee file photo from 2010.

The brewery closed in 1948 after being sold to new owners and the brewing buildings were demolished in 1955.

All that remains today is the brick office and warehouse. It’s on both the local and national Register of Historic Places, noted Karana Hattersley-Drayton, who was the City of Fresno’s Historic Preservation Officer for 15 years and now teaches the history of architecture at Fresno State.

“It’s a crown jewel of Fresno,” she said.

The Fresno Brewing Co. was so unique it landed on the AccidentallyWesAnderson.com website. The site is a tribute to the “most interesting, idiosyncratic” — and downright weird — places on earth that mimic the settings filmmaker Wes Anderson uses in his movies, such as “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

Brewery founder Ernst Eilert, from Wisconsin, trained in Germany to brew beer.

“It’s basically a German brewery dropped down in Fresno,” Drayton said. “When you first look at it, it looks like (something from) Wisconsin because that’s where the guy was from.”

The office building is an example of streetcar commercial, meaning the type of buildings that were built when trolleys were popular, with little setback from the road.

It was designed by Eugene Mathewson, who was also the architect behind the Mattei Building on Fulton Street, which until recently had the large G sign for Guarantee Savings atop its roof.

At the Fresno Brewing Co. building, a plaque commemorates its history.

Inside, it’s what Drayton calls “the Pompeii effect.”

“Everything had been frozen in time,” she said.

The office still has cashier windows with bars like an old-timey bank. Pressed tin with ornate designs line the ceilings and walls. Light fixtures, a bookkeeping table and a walk-in safe remain.

There’s an iron spiral staircase spanning all three floors. The elevator remains also, with a belt pulley system originally powered by mules when it was first built.

Photos show a conveyor belt system in the basement stretching to an upper floor.

“I really credit the former owner for preserving and protecting the building,” Drayton said.

Margaret Mingle (and daughter Pat Haun) owned it for decades, after her late husband, Fred Mingle, bought it for his trucking business before his death in 1951. The family’s companies — Mingle Transportation, Starr Transfer and Fresno Tent and Awning — all operated out of the building.

Today, the building is owned by the man who owned Fresno-based Fashion Furniture for years.

All those treasures inside are locked up tight. There’s a new security gate in front, cameras on the building, and a satellite jail and parking for detectives right next door.

Murder, Prohibition and vampires

Some of the brews made by the Fresno Brewing Co., which was later bought by Grace Bros. before it closed.

Fresno was proud of its homegrown brewery. Newspaper stories and ads from the time called for buying locally, noting how dollars stayed in the community.

But its history wasn’t without a colorful side.

In 1910, a man complained to the Fresno Tribune newspaper about the brewery selling beer on Sundays. Men would buy cases beer and sit around outside, “drinking, casting obscene insinuations, and using profane language in a copious manner and loud tone” that apparently shocked every woman around.

In 1914, the night watchman shot the night salesman three times as he fled from him, according to a newspaper account. Salesman Clarence Edward Allyn was found crumpled in the doorway to the engine room — a building elsewhere on the grounds that has long since been torn down.

The watchman, John Weber, then shot himself in the mouth and was later found by his nephew.

Weber had complained that Allyn was selling beer and not turning the money into the company. However, Weber’s son-in-law told the newspaper that Weber was insane and may have been obsessing over the allegation.

When Prohibition started, Fresno Brewing Co. stopped brewing beer. Though there were unconfirmed reports of a speakeasy, the company switched to making ice cream and soda.

It made 5,600 gallons of ice cream every 19 hours under the name Sierra Ice Cream, according to the Fresno Morning Republican newspaper in 1920. It sold bricks of ice cream for 5 cents (but not cones, because those were still subject to a 1-cent war tax).

And here’s where the brewery may have a tie to one of the most well known ice cream companies in the country: Dreyer’s Ice Cream.

That story said “W.M. Dryer, said to be one of the most expert ice cream men, and in great demand, is in charge of the ice cream end of the business as superintendent.”

William Dreyer founded what is now Dreyer’s Ice Cream in 1928 in Oakland. The last name is spelled different in the story, though it could be an error. Dreyer’s did not return messages seeking comment, but records show William Dreyer opened an ice creamery in Visalia in 1921, so it’s possible — though not confirmed — that he could have been making ice cream in nearby Fresno the year before.

The brewery also made 1,200 cases of soda a day during Prohibition.

Mingle, the office building’s former owner, told Bee photographer John Walker in 2010, when she was 98, that she remembered picking out sodas there with her siblings as a child.

They could choose from a box holding bottles of lemon, orange or strawberry soda, but “no cola. They wouldn’t let us have cola because it had dope in it” — a reference to the early days of Coca-Cola, when it contained small amounts of cocaine. The bottles cost 3 1/2 cents each at the brewery, a savings since they cost 5 cents at the store.

Fresno Brewing was involved in an attempt to make a carbonated drink from raisins called Raisin-Ned in 1931, but it didn’t appear to go anywhere, according to newspaper accounts.

So what about those vampires?

The Fresno Brewing Co. office was home to a gang of meth-addicted vampires who slept in the dark recesses of the basement where bags of oats and barley were stored — or so local author Patrick Fontes imagined it.

He’s the writer of “Blood Set,” part of the Vampiros Cholos series. He’s a Fresno native with PhD in history, which he teaches, along with Chicano Studies at the college level.

He got a tour of the building several years ago and it enthralled him.

“The lobby is like you’re stepping back into time,” he said. “It just has that kind of feel. This is the type of place where vampires would make their nest.”

The vampires in the book, led by low-riding motorcycle-riding Princesa, feasted on meth-addicted homeless people downtown, even keeping a few in the building as food sources. They remodeled the upper floors into darkened bedrooms, completed with walk-in closets “because vampires loved their clothes, especially old school punk-goth-vatos.”

And to build goodwill with the community, the vampires allowed local artists to display their art in the lobby on Art Hop nights.

But in on a serious note, Fontes reveres buildings such as these. As a kid growing up in the Tower District, he remembers a debate about whether to tear down the 1916 Old Administration Building at Fresno City College. The preservationists won that one (though other buildings, such as the domed neoclassical Fresno County Courthouse were not so lucky and were demolished).

And though the Fresno Brewing Co. doesn’t appear to be in any immediate danger, Fontes and others want it to be preserved.

“There’s been in tendency in Fresno history of leaders tearing down old buildings to make way for new real estate,” he said. “It’s very important that we save those buildings that are left.”