The M.K. Goetz Brewery, located on the historic circus grounds of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey at the northeast corner of 17th and Indiana, is pictured on an early Kansas City postcard. It was published about 1936 when the building was completed. The caption on the back of the promotional card adds: America's most modern brewers. New from the ground up. Michael Karl Goetz was a German immigrant who stopped in St. Joseph, Mo., on the way to the California gold fields and decided to stay. He established his own brewery in a small frame building after working a few months for another brewer. When he died in 1901 his four sons carried on. The company, organized in 1859, was 101 years under the management of the Goetz family. The company started making plans for its Kansas City plant immediately after prohibition. Cost of the building (pictured) was $750,000.At its peak the brewery, specializing in draught beer, turned out 150,000 barrels annually. As the demand for bottled, canned and packaged beer products increased, Goetz shifted its operations here in the 1960s. Goetz merged with the Pearl Brewing Company of San Antonio, Tex., in the 1960s. Today the old Goetz building, as pictured, is gone. The site is now used as a parking facility for the Catalogue Distribution Center of Sears Roebuck & Company. Kansas City Times, August 3, 1984.
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