Building of the Day: 38-40 Park Street

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Former Minck Brothers & Co. Bottling Company
Address: 38-40 Park Street
Cross Streets: Broadway and Beaver Street
Neighborhood: Bushwick
Year Built: 1883
Architectural Style: 19th century factory building
Architect: Theobald Englehardt
Other Buildings by Architect: Nearby – Arion Hall, Ulmer Brewery buildings, plus churches, factories, warehouses, tenements, row houses and mansions in Bushwick, Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Eastern Bedford Stuyvesant, and more
Landmarked: No

The story: The name Bushwick was almost synonymous with beer in the late 19th, early 20th century. The many breweries were scattered all over Bushwick, and on into other communities, but the area around today’s BOTD had one of the highest concentrations of all. Right behind this block were some of the buildings making up the large Ulmer Brewery, and nearby was the even larger Rhinegold Brewery. Into this mix of breweries came this company, the Minck Brothers.

Unlike Ulmer and Rheingold, the Minck Brothers didn’t brew beer, they made their fortune bottling it. Julius Minck, like most of his contemporaries, was a German immigrant who came to the United States to seek his fortune. His parents were already here in Brooklyn, along with an uncle, but Julius was still in school and didn’t come over until 1872. He began working for his uncle Henry, who had established a bottling business. His brothers would soon join him. They all eventually became partners in the company at Henry’s death, along with a man named George Docher. The name was changed to Minck Brothers & Company in 1894.

The Minck Brothers operation consisted of this building, as well as the building next door that wrapped around Beaver Street. A large courtyard was enclosed by the buildings, giving the company room for shipping and loading wagons, and later trucks. This complex can be seen in the 1918 map below. This building, and probably the rest of the plant, was designed by Theobald Engelhardt, the most prolific architect in Bushwick. (Today’s Beaver Street buildings are not the original buildings on that plot.)

A German-American like his clients, born and raised in Williamsburg, Englehardt had his hand in almost all of the breweries, factories and warehouses in the area, as well as the homes the brewmeisters lived in, in the churches they worshipped in, and in their investment properties. Over the years, we’ve showcased dozens of Engelhardt buildings, and there are plenty more.

Although Minck Brothers did bottle other brewery’s beers, their main business was the bottling of mineral and soda waters. They had their own bottles with their name on them, some of which turn up on collector’s sites regularly, and later, their own paper label. Their mineral waters were very popular and their names appear in advertisements for the fine establishments that carried their brand. They also bottled soda water, aka carbonated water, or seltzer. Flavorings were often added, as well; the beginnings of what we know today as soda pop or soda, etc.

Lawsuits seem to be par for the course of running a large business, and Julius Minck saw his share of lawsuits during his long career. In 1907, a woman named Mrs. Cathy Lang, a native of Alsace, claimed that she had sold Julius Minck a tried and true recipe for “near-Champagne,” and he owed her $1,000 for the recipe. As the tale came out in trial, Mrs. Lang had approached him with this miraculous recipe that would produce a beverage so fine, no one would be able to tell the difference between her drink and fine champagne.

She gave him the recipe to test, but her condition was that she be present to oversee the process. He then tried the recipe himself, without her, and the result was a foul-smelling brew that could peel paint. When he protested, she told Minck that he had done it wrong. She accused him of trying to brew the drink in dirty old beer bottles, she said he didn’t turn the bottles in the right direction, or carry out other arcane methods that, under her care, would have produced a perfect brew.

While all of this testimony was going on, the jurors were writing it all down, eager to do a little brewing of their own. Julius Minck testified that he had been fooled, and wasn’t going to pay for a fraudulent recipe, but the jury sided with Mrs. Lang, and ordered Minck Brothers to pay her the thousand dollars.

Because most of their business came from mineral and soda waters, Minck Brothers was able to survive Prohibition. But they almost didn’t survive a messy lawsuit. In 1928, a young woman named Adeline Smith was working at her father’s store in Meadowmere, Long Island. She was leaning over a water tub in which several bottles of Minck soda were cooling. One of the bottles exploded, and glass hit her in the eye, eventually causing her to have the eye removed. Miss Smith and her parents sued the Peerless Glass Company, the makers of the bottle, and the Minck Brothers Company.

Two years after the accident occurred, the case went to trial. The judge ended up awarding Miss Smith $37,500 of the $50,000 they had sued for. Julius Minck died several years later, in 1934. He was 78 years old, and was buried in Bushwick’s Evergreen Cemetery. The company must have closed soon afterwards, as I found no other entries in any newspaper or publication.

This building, 38-40 Park Street, seems to have gone to an Abraham Stern whose company, A. Stern Co, went bankrupt in 1936. The contents of the building were sold at auction. Whoever had the building in 1942 also lost it. A notice of a foreclosure sale was printed in the papers on September 25, 1942. This building’s history has been unremarkable since. It sold for $900K just this past December. Someone got a great deal. I hope it is repurposed for housing or artists’ space, and not torn down. It’s a great old factory building. Don’t tear it down!!!

(Photograph: Christopher Bride for PropertyShark)

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