Rainier Brewery dominated in the growth and development and current visual character of Georgetown. The brewery was established prior to 1890, the Bayview Brewery was one of several independent breweries situated along the east side of the Duwamish estuary and near the Northern Pacific Rail Road (NPRR) and Columbia and Puget Sound Rail Road (C&PSRR) lines. The Seattle Brewing and Malting Company was established in 1893 and was formed by the consolidation of three of the largest breweries; the Bayview, the Albert Braun and the Claussen-Sweeney Brewing companies. By 1905, the Seattle Brewing and Malting Company operated a large complex in Georgetown, had offices at Ninth Avenue S. (now Airport Way S.) and Plum Street and a “Bayview” branch, which included the bottling department situated at the subject site. By 1908 the “Seattle Brewing and Malting Company, Bayview Branch” was a complex of five masonry buildings and one wood frame structure.
Between 1900 and 1907, the Seattle Brewing and Malting Company established a large modem brick masonry plant at the old Claussen -Sweeney Brewery site in Georgetown, believed to have been the fourth largest brewery complex in the United States during this era.
On January I, 1916 prohibition began in Washington State, four years before the rest of the nation went dry. The Seattle Brewing and Malting Company relocated its brewing operations to San Francisco for the four year period until national prohibition occurred. The old Bayview plant appears to have been used for nonalcoholic bottling purposes during the late-1910s and throughout the 1920s.
After prohibition was repealed in 1932, the Georgetown brewery complex (which had been adapted to cold storage) was not reopened. Instead, the much smaller Bayview plant became an active brewery and began its evolution into today’s modem (although no longer functioning) industrial facility. Permit records indicate that various business entities including the Seattle Brewing and Malting Company, the Century Brewing Company, and Hemrick Brewing had a role in plant development in the years immediately after the repeal of Prohibition.
