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The Port Washington Malt Co. was an
impressive enterprise for a village of Port Washington's size, but it has
now been completely demolished. An even larger enterprise was the brewery
built at the foot of the north bluff fronting Lake Michigan on what is
today the west side of the 400 block of N. Lake St. Today, only a single
greatly altered building from this brewery still exists and it is now used
as the American Legion Memorial Post No. 82's meeting hall (435 N. Lake
St.). The exact date when this brewery was begun has not yet been
identified but by 1883 it was known as the Lakeside Brewery and was owned
by G. Biedermann, proprietors.
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Biedermann still controlled it as late as
1900, but in 1903, the company changed hands and was renamed the Port
Washington Brewing Co., makers of Premo beer, sold under the slogan
"the beer that made Milwaukee furious." The new proprietors of
the firm, Louis and C. F. Labahn and George Blessing, rebuilt and enlarged
the brewery in 1909. The firm managed to survive Prohibition and was again
producing beer in 1935 and was known as The Old Port Brewing Corporation.
Since then, however, all but one of its buildings have been demolished and
this sole survivor has now been greatly altered.
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