The History of the Monarch Brewing Company of Chicago.

Monarch Brewing Company was a nondescript group of brick buildings at, 1090-1118 West 21st Street, Chicago operated on this site from 1892 until 1958, making it one of Chicago’s longer lasting breweries, and one of the few to survive long after the end of Prohibition.

The section on the left with bricked-up windows was once a bottling house for the brewery (likely built in the 1930s), though it has been heavily altered and shortened.

A former warehouse and shipping building on 21st Place is also still standing. All of the other former brewery buildings on the site have been demolished over the years.

Drink Coaster

WWII Advertisement

Property History:
Joseph Hladovec Brewing Company (1890-1892)
Monarch Brewing Company (1892-1898) Telephone: Canal 6500
Monarch Brewery United Breweries (1898-1909)
Monarch Brewery (1909-1922)
Monarch Beverage Co. (1923-1932) The Prohibition years.
Monarch Brewing Co. Inc. (1932-1936)
Monarch Brewing Co. (1936-1958)
Van Merritt Brewing Co. opened on the same site in 1958 and closed in 1967.

INDEX TO MY ILLINOIS AND CHICAGO FOOD & RESTAURANT ARTICLES.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

1902 Picture of Milwaukee Avenue and Fulton Street, Chicago.

Looking north-west on Milwaukee Avenue at Fulton Street on the 2-digit (address) block in 1902. Today, this is the 200 hundred block of Milwaukee Avenue after the 1909 Chicago street renaming and renumbering system was put in place. If the photo showed a little more of Milwaukee Avenue, you would see the Lake Line elevated ('L') tracks.

In this photograph is the relocated "Green Tree Tavern" Building which is the long building. The John Walsh & John J. Quinn horseshoers at 31 Milwaukee, and a dry goods store with an ad for the Chicago American[1] Newspaper on the building. Wooden sidewalks, Chicago Street Paver Bricks, and streetcar tracks[2].

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] The paper's first edition came out on July 4, 1900, as Hearst's Chicago American. It became the Morning American in 1902 with the appearance of an afternoon edition. The morning and Sunday papers were renamed as the Examiner in 1904. James Keeley bought the Chicago Record-Herald and Chicago Inter-Ocean in 1914, merging them into a single newspaper known as the Herald. William Randolph Hearst purchased the paper from Keeley in 1918. Circulation figures for Chicago newspapers appearing in Editor & Publisher in 1919. The American's circulation of 330,216 placed it third in the city, behind the Chicago Tribune (424,026) and Chicago Daily News (386,498), and ahead of the Chicago Herald-Examiner (289,094). Distribution of the Herald Examiner after 1918 was controlled by gangsters. Dion O'Banion, Vincent Drucci, Hymie Weiss and Bugs Moran first sold the Tribune. They were then recruited by Moses Annenberg, who offered more money to sell the Examiner, later the Herald-Examiner. This "selling" consisted of pressuring stores and news dealers. In 1939, Annenberg was sentenced to three years in prison for fraud and died behind bars. The newspaper joined the Associated Press on October 31, 1932.

[2] Streetcar Tracks - Route- Milwaukee Avenue. Abandoned: May 11, 1952. Streetcar service started in 1859 with horse-drawn cars, which were replaced by electric-powered trolleys by 1890. By the mid-1930s, 3,742 streetcars were running on tracks laid along 529 miles of streets in a grid that provided Chicagoans a streetcar stop within a few blocks of where they lived, worked or shopped.