Grand Rapids Breweries with Interesting History and Historic Features

One of the beautiful aspects about the rise of craft beer in the United States is the tendency for breweries to settle into amazing buildings.

Fortunately for Grand Rapids, many of the breweries have found homes in unique old buildings and that makes for incredible experiences, even for non-beer lovers.

Take a look at a few Grand Rapids breweries located in historic buildings:

Alebird Taphouse and Brewery, 2619 84th St. SW

Located in Byron Center, about 20 minutes southwest of downtown Grand Rapids, Alebird Taphouse and Brewery inhabits a historic building that was once a hotel busy with guests arriving from the nearby railway station.

The Hotel Byron was built in 1902 and the building still retains the hotel’s basic structure, though the interior has been beautifully rehabbed to include a light-filled taproom and second-floor event space.

The hotel eventually closed and the building housed a succession of businesses and eateries. The longest-running tenant was a restaurant that erected a giant chicken statue in the parking lot. “The Chicken” became a regionally famous icon for decades before the restaurant closed and it was removed.

The statue is gone, but the Alebird name and logo continue to pay homage to it and the community that embraced it.

Archival Brewing, 6266 West River Dr. NE

Archival Brewing opened in 2021, in a renovated golf clubhouse 12 minutes northeast of downtown GR. But it’s not the building that ties Archival to the past – it’s the drinks menu.

Husband-and-wife owners Levi and Callee Knoll tap into bygone brewing processes, ingredients and recipes to recreate historic and forgotten styles of beer, cider and mead from around the world – from ancient Egypt to medieval England to pre-Prohibition America, and every era in between.

Every drink comes with a fascinating story, which is sketched out briefly on the menu. If you want more details, the staff is happy to provide them – they’re all educated on the origins and traditions of each selection. New old-style beverages are introduced regularly, making return trips sort of like a continuing (and very delicious) history lesson.

Archival also pays tribute to more recent history through its 19^th Hole Mug Club, a nod to the facility’s former golf incarnation.

Atwater Brewery, 201 Michigan St. NW

Atwater Brewery occupies 6,000 square feet in the former Hotel Rowe, which opened to the public in 1923. The hotel’s 300 rooms, situated on a busy downtown Grand Rapids corner, played an essential role in the city’s ability to continue hosting the semi-annual Furniture Market, a national trade show for buyers and sellers of fine furniture.

The hotel ceased operation in the late 1950s and narrowly escaped demolition during the city’s urban renewal phase. The property was converted to a senior living facility in 1963 and renamed Olds Manor after automotive pioneer Ransom E. Olds, whose heirs invested in the project.

The building changed hands several times until finally closing in 2001. It then sat idle until its renovation as a mixed-use building with retail, residential apartments and condos in 2016. Detroit-based Atwater Brewery opened on the first floor of the Rowe in October 2016.

Vivant Brewery + Spirits, 925 Cherry St. SE

Enjoying one of Vivant’s Belgian-inspired brews in its taproom can take a customer on a spiritual journey.

Perhaps one of the most visually stunning brewery taprooms around, Vivant Brewery + Spirits founders Kris and Jason Spaulding found their home in a former funeral home.

Anchoring the middle of the now-trendy Cherry Street, the funeral home operated from 1894 to 1980, but the building the brewery is housed in was built in 1915.

Today, Vivant’s taproom is located in what was the funeral home’s chapel, which features ornate Belgian monastery architecture; perfect for enjoying the brewery’s Belgian- and French-inspired beers.

Founders Brewing Co., 235 Grandville Ave. SW

It’s hard to tell after a decade of massive expansions, but Founders Brewing Co. is located in a truck depot from the middle of the 20th century.

When the brewery founders Mike Stevens and Dave Engbers first looked at the space, it was vacant and run down, perfect for a growing brewery.

Since Founders moved into the former truck depot, which is now the taproom, the brewery has grown from brewing 6,000 barrels of beer in 2007 to brewing hundreds of thousands today, making it the largest brewery in Michigan – and one of the top 15 in the U.S.

Küsterer Brauhaus, 642 Bridge St. NW

A second venture for Cedar Springs Brewing Company, Küsterer Brauhaus opened in the Bridge Street entertainment district in August 2022. It’s situated inside a 1914-era building that originally housed the Alcazar Theater movie house, which continued to show films (under different owners and names) through the 1970s. It later served as a grocery store and a church space, then sat vacant for a number of years before catching the eye of Cedar Springs Brewing owner David Ringler.

Ringler transformed the interior into a replica of a German beer hall, complete with traditional timber-style architecture, vaulted ceilings, Bavarian flags, and a mix of individual seating and long, communal tables. The beer is even more authentic, made in accordance with Reinheitsgebot regulations, codified in 1516, which limit the ingredients in German beer to four ingredients: water, barley, malt and hops. Even within these confines, the Küsterer beer menu offers an array of styles and flavors.

The new business was named for Grand Rapids beer pioneer Christopher Küsterer, a German immigrant who founded City Brewery on the city’s West Side  in 1847. About a decade after his death, Küsterer’s sons merged the brewery with six other German brewers in town to form the now-closed Grand Rapids Brewing Company, which was aimed at competing against “importing breweries” such as Anheuser-Busch. GRBC closed with the advent of Prohibition. A mural depicting Christopher Küsterer and his team hangs above the Küsterer Brauhaus bar.

Saugatuck Brewing Company - Creston Taproom, 1504 Plainfield Ave. NE

The historic Creston Heights neighborhood, site of Saugatuck Brewing Co.'s Creston Taproom, was annexed by Grand Rapids in 1891 and became a working-class streetcar suburb of the city. The building itself was erected in 1929 for DeKorne Furniture, a business started by Dutch immigrant and master woodcarver Boudewyn DeKorne – who, in addition to crafting fine furniture, carved the original mold for the Lorna Doone cookie.

DeKorne Furniture endured until 1995, when the DeKorne family sold the building to a light manufacturing operation. The space sat vacant for a decade before the original owners of Creston Taproom purchased and renovated it, opening the brewery’s doors in 2016.

You can still see pieces of the building’s Art Deco past in the tin ceiling tiles and the hand-carved handrail on the stairs leading to the second-floor event space, dubbed “Golden Age.” These details have been preserved by Saugatuck Brewing Co., which purchased the business in 2021.

The Mitten Brewing Company, 527 Leonard St. NW

The Mitten Brewing Co. embraces history, especially the history of its own building.

Owners Max Trierweiler and Chris Andrus chose the historic Engine House No. 9 as the home for their brewery in 2012 and have since spent a significant amount of time restoring the building and honoring its past.

As the brewery was figuring out how to decorate the expansion into the upstairs, they decided to dedicate it to the history of the firehouse, which operated from 1890 to 1966.

The downstairs taproom is where the wagons and steam engines were housed, while the taproom brewhouse and kitchen were the stables for the horses. The upstairs taproom was the living quarters, and don’t worry, the building’s original fire pole is still on display.

Employees of the brewery have also documented haunted activity in the brewery, with a ghostly footprint preserved in the middle of the upstairs bar.