International Shoe

International Shoe. Cherokee-Lemp Historic District. , "Lemp Brewing Plant Sold at 'Eight Cents on the Dollar.'" headlined at a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article reporting the sale at auction of this huge brewery complex on June 28, 1922., The passage of the Eighteenth Amendment , Prohibition , had virtually shut down the brewery. The Lemp Brewing Company experimented with the production of a non-alcoholic brew, named Cerva, for a short time. Brewing Cerva, however, required only a small portion of the huge facility and was not profitable. William J. Lemp, president of the brewing company and grandson of its founder, decided to liquidate the operation., "Going, Going, Gone" echoed through the empty bottling house, site of the sale, as the complex was auctioned in 6 units. Before Prohibition, the complex was valued at $7,000,000 and employed over a thousand men. The 1922 sale price was only $588,5000. A woeful Lemp described the low sale price saying, "It's something aweful.", International Shoe Company purchased the first unit of the complex that was auctioned. Having merged with Peters Shoe Company and Roberts, Johnson and Rand, International Shoe was the nation's largest shoe producer. Eventually the company became the owner of the entire complex, using it as a supply depot and factories where shoe accessories like boxes and laces were made., In 1966, after International Shoe became Interco, it began leasing space to individual companies. Interco sold the 14 acres in 1992. The letters "ISCO" on the smokestack recall that International Shoe Company owned the brewery complex for seventy years.