How Dayton breweries stepped up after the 1913 flood

Panoramic view of the aftermath of flood and fire in 1913 Dayton. Image from Library of Congress.

© Copyright 2019 Timothy R. Gaffney

On this date in 1913, days of unrelenting rain culminated in the Great Flood of 1913. Nowhere was the destruction worse than in here in Dayton: levees collapsed and destructive floodwaters swept through the center of town. Adding to the calamity, gas lines broke and fires blazed even as rushing waters engulfed the Gem City.

Rivers have always played a huge role in the Miami Valley’s history, so it shouldn't surprise us that the region’s greatest natural disaster involved its rivers. But breweries played a role in relief efforts, as I learned while researching my book Dayton Beer.

Up and down the Miami Valley and in surrounding states, the flooding that year was one of the worst natural disasters on record. I grew up hearing stories about it from my parents, who handed them down from their parents, who had gone through it in Dayton.

The scale of the devastation is hard to imagine today. Before I tell you about the part beer played, take a look at this amazing footage of the 1913 flood, published by the University of Dayton on YouTube.

John H. Patterson (1844-1922,) founder of the National Cash Register (NCR) Company, was already famous for his pioneering business practices, while others attacked him for flaunting antitrust laws. But when the flood struck, he became Dayton’s hero for ordering NCR to shut down production and focus all of its massive resources on rescue and relief efforts.

Unidentified people in an NCR boat escaping the 1913 Dayton flood. Image from Library of Congress.

Among many other things, NCR turned out hundreds of boats for rescue operations. Family legend has it that my maternal grandfather, Ray Stoddard, used an NCR boat to rescue someone from a second-story window. (He loved to fish but had little money, and I’ve always wondered if NCR ever saw that boat again.)

NCR was in a good position to help. Aware of past floods that had struck the city, Patterson had NCR built on high ground. It even had its own water system, so it was able to produce clean drinking water after the flood contaminated public water supplies.

But Dayton’s breweries also had water systems. By the turn of the 20th century, breweries were increasingly producing ice as well as beer, not only to chill their lagering cellars but to sell as a commercial product. At least some breweries pumped massive amounts of water from wells sunk into the region’s aquifers rather than take it from the river. 

Flood waters on Ludlow Street in downtown Dayton during the 1913 flood. Image from Library of Congress.

Adam Schantz's Riverside Brewery was such a case. Although it was built on the bank of the Great Miami River just east of Salem Avenue, it drew its water from wells. As early as 1899, an article in the June 10 editions of the Dayton Daily News praised the “clearness and beauty” of the brewery’s well water. But the brewery also treated the water, passing it through a complex mineral-stripping process to produce what became known as “Lily water.” Schantz sold it as a separate product.

Breweries outside Dayton also chose the aquifer over the river. A June 27, 1915 article in the Auglaize Republican described the beer-making process of the City Brewing Co.in Wapakoneta: “It would afford you much satisfaction to see the water, which is soft and clear as crystal in its natural state, pumped from their deep wells into their huge boilers,” it reported. That wasn't the end of it: the Wapakoneta brewery then boiled the water, condensed it and passed it through a charcoal filter before transforming it into beer.

This attention to water quality in the brewing process meant breweries had great capacity to produce drinking water after the flood. In Dayton at least, and perhaps elsewhere, breweries became part of the relief effort. I found just a few lines about it in a Dayton Daily News report on a Dayton Board of Education meeting: “… The Dayton Breweries Company and the Olt Brewing Company were thanked for water service furnished the schools while the city water was still in the unpurified state,” noted the May 2, 1913 article.

View of the Riverside Brewery from beneath the Dayton View Bridge. From Bock, History of the Miami Flood Control Project, page 57.

Adam Schantz Jr. (1867-1921) played an even bigger role. The son of the Riverside Brewery’s founder, Schantz had become president of the combined Dayton Breweries Co. After the flood, Governor Cox appointed him to the Dayton Citizens' Relief Committee, with Patterson as chairman, according to C. A. Bock’s History of the Miami Flood Control Project. 

Beyond providing inspirational leadership, Schantz “contributed $60,000 personally and another $60,000 from the (Schantz) estate for the restoration work,” the February 15, 1921 Brewers Journal reported.

Some of Schantz’s philanthropy came in the form of the old Riverside Brewery and some of the Schantz estate’s personal property, according to the January 1919 Miami Conservancy Bulletin. 

The Miami Conservancy District, formed in 1915 to create a system of dams and levees to prevent a repeat of the 1913 flood, determined it needed to widen the Miami River in downtown. Built on the river’s west bank, the Riverside Brewery stood in the way.

Its time had passed anyway, as Prohibition had forced it and Dayton's other breweries to cease beer production and the Dayton Breweries Co. itself would soon be out of business. Schantz donated not only the brewery but the neighboring site of his parents' original home, according to the Bulletin.

I found little else describing the role of brewers and breweries in the great flood of 1913, but I suspect there are other stories out there. What can you add to it?