E-Mail This Article to a Friend The ale trail (continued)

Second, the area was cheap, undeveloped farmland. Roxbury had just been annexed to Boston in 1868, and situated on the outer reaches of town, it was the most inexpensive land in the city. Third — and this, Rickman says, "is kind of a chicken-and-the-egg thing" — the area played home to scores of German immigrants, with their long brewing traditions. (The first lager was brewed in Boston sometime around the 1850s.) You may not think of Boston as a particularly German city, but take a look at some of the street names in the neighborhood: Germania, Schuyler, Bismarck, Brunswick, Beethoven. For decades, many residents lived near the breweries, went to local churches, and drank in nearby German social halls — and never had the need to learn English. The many breweries fostered brand loyalty and friendly competition among brewers. "They were servicing their neighborhoods, and the neighborhoods took pride in their local brewers, their local beers," says Rickman.

It’s easy to imagine the community these breweries might engender when one considers their astonishingly close proximity to each other. Of the buildings that still stand, some are — literally — a stone’s throw from each other. At one spot near the Wentworth Institute of Technology, two buildings remain from what used to be three large complexes on the same city block. That’s a lot of beer for a thirsty city.

Michael Reiskind knows these boarded-up edifices well. Originally from Montreal, he arrived in Jamaica Plain in 1972. In the years since, as an amateur historian with the Jamaica Plain Historical Society (JPHS), he’s absorbed just about everything there is to know about his adopted hometown. On a recent morning, we meet on Washington Street in front of Doyle’s (est. 1882) and head off on a tour of Boston’s beery past.

DRIVING DOWN Columbus Avenue, in Roxbury, Reiskind starts pointing across the street. "That was a brewery ... That used to be a brewery ... That one over there was a brewery." Turning left, we enter the Wentworth campus, pulling over by what once was the southern edge of a large cluster of breweries. Seven or so buildings were demolished decades ago for housing developments, but Reiskind and the JPHS helped save two of them.

Over there are the substantial remnants of the A.J. Houghton Co. (1870 – 1918), which once proudly marketed its Vienna and Pavonia Lagers with sketches of models in Victorian frippery. That empty lot was home to Burkhardt Brewing Co. (1850 – 1918). When the Red Sox won their second World Series, in 1912, Burkhardt commemorated the feat with Red Sox Beer and Pennant Ale. Reiskind never much believed in that Bambino’s Curse malarkey, by the way. Before last fall’s exorcism, he saw darker forces at work. "In 1919, Prohibition came in; 1918 was the last year they won. People say ‘Curse of the Bambino,’ but Burkhardt hasn’t been operating since then," he says, letting his words dangle significantly.

We pull up alongside the remnants of Houghton’s five-story main building. Reiskind points to where the front office once stood, to the rounded granite blocks that served as stoppers for carriage wheels at the entrance to a courtyard that’s now an overgrown parking lot. He marvels at the building’s beautiful brickwork, the high-quality granite. "There’s some pride here," he says. He hands me a photograph of the place in its prime. With little effort, the street momentarily springs to life in my mind’s eye, bustling with horse carts and mustachioed porters. But it’s only for a moment. Across the parking lot, three homeless guys slouch dejectedly on the corner.

We head over to Terrace Street, toward the Union Brewing Co. (1893–1911). The complex’s old power building now houses Mississippi’s restaurant, which has enlivened its walls with a colorful mural depicting the history of jazz. Irishman James Kenney owned the Union Brewery, as well as now-demolished Park Brewery, across Terrace Street. (Reiskind suspects that Frank’s Autobody inhabits the last remnant of it.) Kenney made both ale and lager, but kept the distinct styles separate, brewing Union Lager on the left side of the street, Park Ale on the right.

Down the road, we come to the largest building on the tour. The brewery itself was lost to the wrecking ball, but the gargantuan storage facility for the Rueter & Alley/Highland Springs Brewery (1867-1918) remains. Irish and German immigrants displaced by the famine and the revolutions of 1848, respectively, were the chief ethnic groups in the neighborhood, and Highland Springs — so named because it used fresh water from a Mission Hill spring instead of from Stony Brook — was a rare joint venture between the two ethnicities. By the 1870s, its Highland Springs Ale had made it one of the biggest breweries around.

Henry A. Rueter was the powerful president of the American Brewers Association, and Reiskind suspects he may have had enough sway that he staved off Prohibition in the 1880s. After it finally arrived in 1919, the brewery produced metal and rubber, while the storage building became sheet-music publisher Oliver Ditson & Co. In 1934, after the darkness lifted, the brewery itself was reopened by Walter Croft, churning out massively successful cans of Croft Cream Ale and Croft Pilgrim Ale for almost 20 years.

Just up the hill, on Heath Street, stands the brewery that John R. Alley opened on his own after he split from Rueter in 1885: J.R. Alley & Sons (1885–1918), also known as Eblana (Ptolemy’s ancient appellation for Dublin). "People drank a lot of beer," Reiskind reasons of the breweries’ proximity to each other, as he points to the J.R.A. engraved in granite over the employees’ entrance. For a moment, I can almost imagine guys in overalls punching in for the day, maybe carrying lunch pails equipped with a big mug for a mid-afternoon sampling of their product.