The Old Castle Brewery Building

This brewery is the second brewery of American design to be erected in South Africa. The New York architect and Engineer, H Steinmann designed it. The construction period was from 1900 to 1902, with the disarrangement of internal affairs, naturally interfering with the completion of the plant.

The structure is entirely fireproof, having skeleton steel frames, as buildings not built with this system were a constant fire hazard in Cape Town. The steel frames, the building material as well as the entire brewing equipment were exported from the United States under the supervision of the architect.

H Steinman not only supervised the shipping, but the erection of the building and the installation of a complete vacuum fermentation plant, comprising “F.F” steel tanks, chip tanks and glass enameled steel tanks from the Pfaudler Company, of Rochester, New York. The total cost of this structure was £120,000. The main material used is brick. It is done in English bond and displays an understanding of the structural as well as the aesthetic properties of brick.

Castle Brewery, Woodstock 1902
Design
Its resemblance to a ‘castle’ is more advertisement. It is a deliberate design with its dungeons, rusticated stone base, turret, cannons and mansard roof.

The building was built to emulate a medieval castle with its rusticate base of Table Mountain sandstone and upper face brick load-bearing walls. The South facing façade was the most important one and designed to face towards the recently completed railway line. The railway was the most important means of transport. This attention is unlike today when the building would have been orientated away from the railway line towards the North.