Schwenk Brewery --Yankton Commercial Historic District, Yankton SD
N 45° 52.123 W 097° 23.619
14T E 624676 N 5080716
The Schwenk Brewery is a contributed building to the Yankton Commercial Historic District, Yankton SD
Waymark Code: WM17G74
Location: South Dakota, United States
Date Posted: 02/16/2023
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The Schwenk Brewery is listed on the US National Register of Historic Places as a contributing building to the Yankton Commercial Historic District as follows:
From the NRHP nomination form for the Yankton Commercial Historic District: (
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"Site number 98
Schwenk Brewery
200-204 Walnut
History
Built (and designed?) By Frederick William Schwenk in 1904, this structure served as the power and bottling plant for the Schwenk-Barth Brewing Company. In 1919 it changed used to the Nash-Finch Wholesale Grocery and Fruits Warehouse. Since 1952, it has served as a cleaners.
Description
The structure consists of a two-story central building and two flanking one story buildings. Built entirely of reddish-orange brick, the brewery has the simple, bold details of c. 1900 industrial buildings. This includes the nearly flat, largely unarticulated services, punctuated with bold geometric shapes, such as the arched windows, and recessed central panels. Corbelled cornices are another common industrial treatment which add a three-dimensional quality to the solid mass of the large structure. This building also features a fine line of decorative granite which functions as both string course and hood mold.
Significance: industry, architecture, business
The single, industrial building in the district marks the visual and spatial separation of the commercial and industrial sections of the city. The building also serves as a reminder of a common 19th and early 20th century industry which has ceased to exist in Yankton and other small towns. The building itself is a well executed industrial structure, which balances its large mass in bulk against its precisely in size details, such as the core build brick cornice on the main building and simple yet bold granite string course/hood molds on the subordinate buildings."