F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Company is one of New York City’s great success stories. From humble beginnings, he grew to become the most successful beer producer in the world and left a mark on the city that will never be undone.

The brewery was founded in 1842 by Frederick and Maximilian Schaefer, two brothers who had emigrated from Germany only a few years earlier. They were immediately successful due to their lager beer recipe, which was already popular in Germany, but new in America. Its cool and refreshing taste soon began to convert New Yorkers from the English brown ales they were used to. The Schaefer’s original location was at 19th Street and Broadway in Manhattan, but their rapid success forced them to move to a larger plant north of Grand Central Station in 1849, where they brewed beer for the next 67 years.

The Schaefer plant on Park Avenue was sold in 1912 (today that parcel is occupied by St. Bartholomew’s Church) and a new location was opened on Kent St, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This was the legendary Schaefer Brewery. It was one of the largest and most modern breweries of the pre-Prohibition period. Now under the control of Rudolph Schaefer, the plant thrived until Prohibition prevented it, and all breweries in the US, from making alcoholic beer. However, the modern facility easily became a producer of non-alcoholic beer, as well as dyes and artificial ice, and on sales of these it was able to survive until Prohibition was repealed in 1933.

At this point, Rudy Schaefer, Jr., the nation’s youngest brewery president, was running Schaefer Brewing Company. Months before the official repeal, Rudy launched an advertising campaign with the slogan “Our hand has never lost its ability.” With this and other smart business decisions, Schaefer became one of the top brewers to recover from Prohibition and, with many of its competitors out of business, it soon became one of the top breweries in the world.

In 1938, Schaefer sold more than 100,000 barrels of beer; in 1944 there were 200,000. Soon, the company began looking to expand its reach to other territories. They opened a plant in Albany, NY in 1950, but a plant that opened in Cleveland, OH in 1961 closed after only 2 years. Fierce competition from powerful Midwestern breweries hampered their expansion. Another plant was opened in Baltimore to replace the one in Ohio.

Drawing inspiration from Midwestern breweries like Pabst, Schaefer opened a huge, ultra-modern facility in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley in 1971. However, this underscored how outdated his other breweries were. That same year, Budweiser surpassed Schaefer as the world’s best-selling beer. The Albany Brewery was closed the following year, and in 1976, the heartbreaking decision was made to close the Brooklyn location, which had been in use for exactly 70 years. The announcement was made just a week after the closure of Brooklyn’s Rheingold Brewery, the only other brewing company still operating in New York City. It also ended a relationship between the Schaefer name and New York that had existed for 134 years, longer than any other brewery in history.

Schaefer was finally bought by the Stroh Brewery Company in 1981, and today it is produced by Pabst, its longtime rival. Yet its impact on New York City’s economic engine for a century and a half, as well as the city’s beer culture, will be felt as people continue to call New York home.