Philadelphia, 13th Feb. - This morning at half-past nine, the walls of the brewery on the corner of Thompson and 31st Streets collapsed and, in its fall, buried 20 workers beneath the rubble.
This morning between 9 and 10 o'clock in Müller's brewery, located at Thompson and 31st street, occurred a terrible misfortune. The ice house connected with the brewery collapsed and buried a large number of workers under the rubble. One was brought out dead to daylight. Two others are in sight, one of whom is alive but stuck in the rubble. Numerous police have rushed to work with the citizens to rescue the unfortunate workers.
There were about 12 workers busy putting ice in the ice house, when the walls gave way and the whole building collapsed. The rescue work has so far produced the following result: Thomas Allen was brought out dead; his body was terribly mutilated and all of his bones were broken. Heinrich Mueller, the son of the owner, was badly injured, pulled out from the rubble and taken to his father's apartment. Gottlieb Scherank, William Bewlen, W. Steuben, Patrick Moorley and L. Rupert were brought to light and immediately taken to the German Hospital. Their sufferings are terrible. Gottlieb Leib was seriously injured. One leg was broken in 5 or 6 places, so that amputation is necessary.
The Collapse of Müller's Brewery in Philadelphia
On Friday morning, about 9:30, a terrible misfortune occurred in Philadelphia. The large brewery of Mr. H. Müller, located at the northeast corner of 32nd and Jefferson Street, collapsed and buried under its ruins 16-20 people, of which 11-12 were killed. The building, which was completed in November, was made of brick, 3 ½ stories high and had on 32nd Street a front of about 50 feet and on Jefferson Street about 100 feet. The collapsed part equaled about two-thirds of the whole building. It had been built in the same way in order to brew the new method of beer and had therefore to take an extremely large load in the upper floors. In the basement were large vaults. The first floor contained the machinery and the boilers in which the beer is brewed. On the second floor the beer was stored for fermenting, there were on the same floor a number of colossal vats, which contained about 2000 barrels of beer. Above was the Ice House or the refrigerator, an additional room, which held approximately 1,700 tons of ice, and finally on top was the reefer/cold storage, in the wrought iron floor large vats were mounted, in which the beer was pumped into from downstairs. Once the beer is cooled here, it is sent down to the fermentation room which must be constantly kept at a uniform temperature. During the past two weeks workers had been busy creating ice in the ice house, and it is estimated that already about 1,000 tons were made. On Friday morning, the people went to work as usual, and there was already a considerable quantity of ice in the store room when it crashed suddenly and everything located under the ice storage part of the building collapsed. The walls burst and fell to the outside, while the whole mass of ice, beams, malt, hops and other content of the building buried those who were in that part of it, of which there were at least nine to ten victims of the disaster. The collapse has been widely questioned. In a small outbuilding of the eastern part was a kiln, and as the collapse occurred, the kiln blew apart and the debris fell into flames. The workers of the Poth brewery across the street were, however, quick to hand and extinguished the fire.
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