Alexandria’s Historic Beer

From time to time, Old Town North Alliance (OTNA) will feature stories about buildings and activities that are no longer present in Old Town North.  Their history is part of the fabric of our community, and their past presence is often manifested by names that remain on buildings and streets.   For example, the housing development on part of the brewery's site is called Portner's Landing, and one of its streets is Tivoli Passage.

Site of the former Portner’s Brewery. The lower part of the building was maintained when Portner’s Landing was developed.

Before Prohibition made illegal the “manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors,” the largest beer brewery in the Southern United States was located in the City of Alexandria, Virginia.

Robert Portner founded Portner & Co. in Alexandria in 1862 with two partners. Their objective was to profit from supplying beer to the Federal troops stationed in the Washington, DC area. The enterprise was quite lucrative, making Portner and his family very wealthy.

For nearly 50 years, Portner Brewing operated several depots from Washington, DC to North Carolina. Its Alexandria brewery occupied two city blocks around Wythe, Pendleton, Washington and Saint Asaph Streets. The bottling facility was located at 515 North Washington Street, in a building that is now The Mill, a residential apartment building; this building was constructed in 1847 for the Mount Vernon Cotton Factory, but was sold to Portner in 1903.

Unfortunately for Portner Brewing, it was forced out of business by Virginia’s Prohibition law, which took effect in 1916, four years earlier than nationwide prohibition. It was the largest employer in the City of Alexandria at the time.

Portner himself was an interesting fellow. Born in Germany in 1837, he followed his brothers to New York at age 16 in 1853. He worked in a grocery store and as an accountant, then relocated to take a sales position in his brother’s Richmond, Virginia tobacco factory. The factory was not a success, and Portner retreated to New York, only to return to Virginia in 1862. He was a driven entrepreneur and active in several civic organizations. He and his wife, Anna, had thirteen children. Portner died in 1906, just a few years after retiring to his lovely summer home, Annaburg Manor in Manassas, which is on the National and Virginia’s Historic Registers and became a Manassas City park in 2018.