Bourbon's Backroads by Raitz Karl;

Author:Raitz, Karl; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2019-01-14T21:00:00+00:00

Old Taylor Distillery site.

Warehouse B was built of brick, with stone quoins at the corners. At four stories tall and more than 530 feet long, it is thought to be the largest whiskey aging warehouse of its type in the world. The turreted castle-style still house was constructed of Tyrone limestone, sometimes referred to as Kentucky River marble; with the passage of time, the stone has weathered to a bright white. This iconic building not only housed the distilling apparatus but also came to represent E. H. Taylor’s distillery and appeared in publicity photographs and postcards. A large sunken garden, built in 1906 and central to the site, has been reclaimed from overgrowth. Artisans restored the peristyle spring house or pergola that, together with the garden, were places favored by early twentieth-century visitors. When fully operational, the renovated works will be capable of producing about 12,000 barrels of spirits per year.32

Midway

At Midway, one is reminded that while distilleries offered seasonal employment and markets for grain farmers, they were also potential hazards. In the early 1880s Thomas Edwards built a new distillery near the Southern Railroad tracks in Midway. S. J. Greenbaum purchased the distillery, and when Mr. Greenbaum died in 1897, his family continued to operate the distillery under his name.33 The distillery fed cattle in pens downslope near a creek, Lee’s Branch. This led to complaints, and in November 1887 the Woodford Circuit Court fined the Greenbaum distillery for “suffering still slops and offal from [the] distillery and cattle pens to run into a branch near by.”34 To partially address the slop dumping problem, the distiller installed a new slop dryer. But in January 1904 the dryer and boiler room caught fire, causing some $25,000 in damage.

Four years later, in August 1908, an arsonist set fire to the distillery’s six bonded warehouses, which contained 47,500 barrels of whiskey. As the blazing warehouses collapsed, burning whiskey poured from smashed barrels and ran downhill into Lee’s Branch, incinerating the homes of several African American residents. When the liquid fire reached the creek, it ignited the Southern Railroad trestle and two county bridges. For a time, the fire threatened the entire northern section of town. The Midway fire company, possessing only one fire engine, was able to save the distillery works and offices, the superintendent’s home, and the bottling house; the Southern Railroad depot; and the Cogar Company grain elevator, all adjacent to and uphill from the burning warehouses.35 When the burning whiskey in Lee’s Branch reached South Elkhorn Creek, it set the creek afire for several miles, burning a number of houses along the banks. Burning whiskey stained the creek water a dark brown and killed thousands of fish and waterbirds.36 The downstream collateral damage included a “water famine” for creek-side residents, who were unable to fill their cisterns because whiskey contaminated the water for an extended period.37 The loss of the warehouses and the whiskey was estimated at nearly $1 million, for which the Greenbaum family had insurance coverage. The distillery was rebuilt and reorganized by new owners but went bankrupt in 1915.

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