Here are some ads for breweries in Philadelphia releasing Bock Beer in the year 1883.
One of the main ingredients in beer is malt. Since the beginning of the city, Philadelphia has had a good number of malt houses. One of the biggest, in the 19th Century was Perot’s Sons on Vine Street but there was a larger one on 8th Street between Master and Jefferson Streets that doesn’t get a lot of consideration. That one is The Quaker City Malt House at 1422 N. 8th which was established by Francis Blackburne Jr. He was born in Philadelphia in the year 1839 to a father who immigrated from England. At the age 0f 17 he became an apprentice at the malt house of Peter Hall, which at the time, was the oldest and largest in the city. Blackburne quickly mastered the details of the business and was appointed manager. Not too long after the owner suffered some setbacks that seemed like it might end the business. However, Blackburne borrowed money from family and friends and proposed a partnership with Hall which saved the business. The business then became Hall & Blackburne with Blackburne taking control of it. The business began to grow again to a point they outgrew the building they were in. A new property was purchased at 1422 North 8th Street and the Quaker City Malt House was built. In 1861 Peter Hall died and Blackburne took over the business as the sole proprietor. By 1870 the business was malting 300,000 bushels of grain and selling as far north as Boston and as far south as New Orleans with an income of $400,000 a year. Francis Blackburne died in 1898 at the age of 59 and is buried at Woodlands Cemetery in West Philadelphia, where two of his probable acquaintances are also buried - Frederick Gaul and John Gardener. It’s unclear when the Quaker City Malt House stopped operations but it looks like the building is still there.
https://www.philageohistory.org/rdic-images/view-image.cfm/HGSv3.0205
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/135405013/francis-blackburne
Here are a couple images of the brewmasters of Philadelphia at the St. Louis brewmasters convention in the year 1904.
In 1914 C. Schmidt & Sons Brewing Co. built a new brew house for their business. The brewery was designed by the famous Philadelphia architect Otto C. Wolf. At the time the brewery was brewing over 200,000 barrels of beer a year. In 1976 the brewery was bought out and the brewery eventually closed and remained abandoned for at least 20 years before being torn down and replaced with new real estate. Below are some 1914 images and some images from the ruins in 2000.
The 1914 images and story are from Brewer's Journal volume 42 (1914):
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007947389&seq=1
The 2000 image were posted on Flickr by jponte12533:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/8425784@N05/albums/72157626182263207/
