The House that Beer Built: August Nunning and His House at 1401 Jules
/by Bob Fitzpatrick
Bob Fitzpatrick is the expert on early St. Joseph breweries and the people that owned and worked in them.
The impressive Queen Anne structure located at 1401 Jule Street has the unique distinction of having originally been a spacious, comfortable if ornate, home of the wealthy son of the second brewer of St. Joseph, Mr. August Nunning. Henry Nunning, August’s father, arrived in St. Joseph in 1854 with a less than one-year old August Nunning. Henry had landed originally in LaPorte, Indiana in 1849 where he worked in his chosen vocation of brewer at the small Zahn Brewery.
It was in nearby Michigan City that Henry met and married his wife Miss Johanna Louise Arndt in 1853. When Henry moved to St Joseph his wife, her mother and her younger sister Julia Arndt would all make the journey west. Julia would eventually marry Louis Fuelling in 1874 which further cemented the relationship of the brewer Henry Nunning and bottling company owner Fuelling. As a matter of fact when Henry decided to visit his family in Germany in 1868, Louis Fuelling managed the brewery affairs for his brother-in-law for nearly a year.
In 1878, at the age of 24, young Mr. August Nunning was having the time of his life. He had just proposed to his fiance, Miss Mary Blair. Her father, William Blair was a building contractor and in fact is credited with the building of the Miller house on Ashland Avenue as well as the home of Joe Davis among other significant commercial projects. Blair was also the builder of the lagering cellar beneath the yet to be constructed mansion. Unfortunately Mr. Blair would be unable to walk his daughter down the wedding aisle as he had mysteriously been killed on a railroad trip east in 1867 to collect debts owed to him. Apparently Blair had stepped outside his main car, possibly for a smoke, possibly to talk to another man when he either fell, jumped, or was pushed off over a large ravine and the body never found. As a contractor Mr. Blair had a cascading series of debts which would be embarrassing for his heirs and especially his daughter Mary and his forlorn wife. The bills would continue to pile up as liens and Sherriff sales continuously appeared in the local newspapers. Eventually Blair would be declared dead in 1871. Mary’s brother William would share her father’s responsibilities and escort her down the aisle and give his sister’s hand to the young bachelor August.
The wedding was a wonderful celebration of the joining of hearts of the two popular young people and none were more proud of the couple then a beaming Henry Nunning. At the wedding the happy father of the groom entertained his many guests, but this would be more of a private affair with a formal reception to follow after the newlyweds returned from their month long wedding trip. Henry was a good and generous businessman and had a large following of friends. The Morning Herald would remark that they noticed a thrilled Henry giving a fat envelope to his only son August, presumably stuffed with $ 5,000 and the deed to the property at 1401 Jule.
This property was literally above the massive lagering cellar that Henry built back in 1872. An expensive but necessary asset to any brewer, prior to mechanical refrigeration in the mid 1880’s, was the subterranean and in this case, one hundred twenty feet long cellar that kept the curing lager beer at a constant temperature of 40-50 degrees. The proud Henry wished his son and new daughter-in-law a fond farewell as they went on a splendid wedding trip that would include a trip to visit the Arndt’s, Henry’s in-laws, in Michigan City, Indiana.
To the utter horror to all that knew them, upon their return to St Joseph Mary Blair Nunning would develop pneumonia and die in her husband’s arms, within six months of their wonderful wedding. The St Joseph Gazette-Herald commented, “But like the dissolving shadows of a gorgeous dream, all these roseate surroundings were broken up and scattered in a moment. Like the brilliant moonlight, bathing castle and turret and wall in a glow of beauty, but suddenly clouded and wrapped in blackest gloom, this charming picture has faded from our gaze.”
Mary Nunning
The recently wed August had married the love of his life and no other woman would ever live up to his beloved Mary. Gone was August’s desire to have many children and gone was his father Henry’s dream of grandson’s to follow in the management of the brewery business. A heartbroken August would literally pour himself into the management of the brewery from this point forward.
On March 16, 1885 at a party to celebrate Henry Nunning’s sixty-fifth birthday, Henry remarked to another old St Joseph pioneer in attendance, August Vegely, that he had had a premonition that this would be his last birthday, Vegely agreed and thought that he also was in his last year of life. And in fact they both died days apart with Henry Nunning leaving this world on March 26, 1885 and August Vegely less than 24 hours later on March 27th.
It was said that the funeral of Henry Nunning, interred at Mt. Mora, was the largest funeral procession ever seen up to that point. The brewery business and its valuable property was willed to August Nunning while his three sisters Julia, Amelia and Louise each received $ 5,000 from their father’s estate.
August Nunning engaged local architectural team of Edmund J. Eckel and George Mann in 1887 to begin construction of his mansion at 1401 Jule street, above the lagering cellar, that was to be a home of undying love for his wife Mary but now served as a shell to the family life that August had always dreamed of but life had derailed to now that of a bachelor’s residence complete with a beer-tap in his parlor which reached the brewery beneath his splendid house. About ninety feet of cellar remains, approximately thirty feet below the lowest point of the basement. Entry now is via a sheet metal lined shaft which may have enclosed the very line that led from the brewery below to the mansion on top. The wealthy Nunning would have surely descended in a different manner than is currently available but that question is now left to our imagination.
The Nunning House at 1401 Jules is currently for sale. Find out more about its history under Single Family Homes.
Over the course of his lifetime the August Nunning’s mansion would be equally well regarded as a place for enjoying the good life of parties and entertainments but also to the pursuit of fine literature though his highly regarded private library, with many first editions and many German language books; the Nunning house was regularly visited by out of town scholars. Nunning spared no expense in furnishing his house including an over ten foot tall stained glass rendering of Romeo and Juliet to commemorate his complete and unequivocal love for his departed wife. The mansion would include over thirty stained-glass windows. Nunning also had visiting fresco artists complete original works of art in various rooms, not the least his bachelor’s bar in the basement which was as splendid as any bar in any saloon in the city, complete with a brass rail and constructed of Birdseye maple a rare and expensive wood that also adorned the main parlor of the house. The cost of the house in 1887 was reported to be $ 20,000 which equates to $ 540,000 in 2019.
Later in the 1890’s, having tired of the constant need to invest in his brewery and possibly more importantly, a particularly disagreeable beer war with out of town brewers who were literally dumping their product in St. Joseph and selling for half the going price of beer at $ 5.00 per barrel, August Nunning was ready or a life change. This was the era in national brewing history when there was massive consolidation of U.S. breweries by foreign interests. There had been rumors that Nunning would sell out to an English syndicate and then after visiting the Chicago World’s fair in 1893 to a German syndicate. None of these plans would work out but consolidation was now a consideration locally to stave off the predatory tendencies of the big national breweries many of whom already had beer depots in the city. At this very time, across town at the St. Joseph Brewery, now a forty-five year old brewery was dilapidated and the management was looking to rebuild their brewery at a new location. Among other improvements that the St Joseph Brewery needed badly to remain competitive included the need to wean the old structure off of the old and expensive technology of using river ice to stock their ice houses every winter. August Nunning was the first brewer in town to use the modern technology of mechanical refrigeration and his brewery had in fact been retrofitted five years earlier to accommodate the new technology in an efficient manner.
With the momentum of St Joseph Brewing’s needs and possibly August Nunning’s apathy, a lease was made on February 16, 1895 enabling the St. Joseph Brewing Company to lease Nunning’s modern brewing plant, one year at a time, for the price of $ 9,000 per year. At any time the St. Joseph Brewing Company would have the option of buying the Nunning Brewery outright for $ 150,000. As a point of interest the 2019 value of $ 9,000 is approximately $ 274,833 per year.
Thus ended the reign of the Nunning Brewery. Begun in 1854 and leased in 1895, the family business had lasted forty-one years and two generations. It was reported that August Nunning would travel abroad for five years.
August Nunning would live in his mansion until he died on March 13, 1909.
Two years prior to his death August had a stroke and married his housekeeper, Miss May Dill from Hiawatha, Kansas. Knowing that his two sisters Julia Nunning Byrne and Amelia Nunning Carbry did not care for August’s housekeeper and now wife, he had a note in his will that his sisters were not to interfere with his new wife’s disposition of his property. “… and my said wife shall never be required to account to my said sisters for more than their proportions of the income aforesaid actually received from income producing property.”
This was particularly biting to his sisters who clearly noticed the irony and similarity of their father’s marriage of the housekeeper/seamstress Frances after their mother Johanna died in 1867 while giving birth to her eighth child. The animosity was so great that Julia Nunning Byrne would leave town and to her credit attended college in South Bend, Indiana.
May Dill Nunning would soon marry Robert Atkinson on May 27, 1910, and would sell the magnificent mansion at 1401 Jule for $ 25,000 in 1912 to a JW Frederick. We don’t know what became of August Nunning’s fine and valuable book collection.
