The Gunther Brewing Company was a Baltimore brewery founded by George Gunther Sr. and his son, George Gunther Jr. The elder Gunther, born in
Wirtheim, Germany, immigrated to the United States in 1866 and applied his brewing skills first in New York. In 1870, he moved to Baltimore to serve as brewmaster for the
Gehl Brewery, which he took control of in 1880 to create his own business at Conkling and Dillon Streets. In 1899, Gunther Sr. sold his business of 20 years to the
Maryland Brewing Company, a syndicate that was consolidating many of the city's breweries into a "brewing trust". While Gunther Sr. could not contractually compete with the trust, his son was under no such restriction, and the Gunther's took advantage of the loophole. In 1900, George Gunther Jr. founded a new, independent brewery directly across the street from his father's original plant. The trust filed a lawsuit to stop the new venture, but the case was unsuccessful. During this period, Gunther Sr. was president of the same trust that was suing his son, a conflict the courts ultimately ruled in Gunther's favor. The new brewery, sometimes spelled "Guenther" in its early days, was designed by Philadelphia architect
Otto C. Wolf as a state-of-the-art model brewery. The complex consisted of 15 buildings constructed with modern materials like granite foundations and pressed brick. Its centerpiece was the five-story Romanesque brewhouse, a prominent landmark in the Canton neighborhood. With a goal to produce a clean, high-quality beer comparable to German imports, the company did well. By 1959, it was the second largest brewery in Baltimore, one of the major centers of brewing in America, and the Gunther brewery was a major local employer with a staff of over 600 and an annual production capacity of 800,000 barrels. The Gunther family lived at the
Bankard-Gunther Mansion on Butcher's Hill until the death of Gunther Sr. in 1912. After decades of successful brewing in Baltimore, the Gunther Brewing Company was acquired by the Minnesota-based
Hamm's Brewing Company in 1960. Three years later, the brewery was sold again, this time to
F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Company of New York. Schaefer continued to produce the Gunther brand until the plant was permanently closed in 1978, ending a nearly century-long chapter in Baltimore's brewing history. The former brewery complex was added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 2002 and has since been redeveloped. ==Architecture==