First located near Dupont Circle on 20th Street NW, it expanded to a much larger site in Foggy Bottom in 1895 after a major fire.

[1] The Heurich brewery was the largest in Washington's history, capable of producing 500,000 barrels of beer a year and 250 tons of ice daily.

[2] The Christian Heurich Brewing Co. closed in 1956,[3] "because of a decline in sales and because of the knowledge that the government would seek to acquire the site of the brewery for the approaches to the new Theodore Roosevelt Bridge.

He apprenticed as a brewer and butcher, then spent his Wanderjahr working at breweries throughout what is now Austria, Germany, France, and the Czech Republic.

[5] Partnering with a fellow German immigrant and coworker, Paul Ritter, Heurich decided upon Washington, DC.

Led by Vice-chair of the city's five-person Board of Public Works, "Boss" Alexander Robey Shepherd, the foul canal which ran down what is now Constitution Avenue was filled in, roads were paved, and sewer and water lines were installed.

The frantic pace of improvement soon attracted the ire of Congress, and the independent DC Government was eliminated.

However, Shepherd's improvements did make the city more attractive to newcomers, including Heurich and as many as a dozen other brewers.

Heurich's sister Elisabeth moved to Washington from Baltimore to help her brother run his new company.

In July 1878, he threw a party for a thousand guests to celebrate his vastly expanded brewery, still on 20th Street.

Mathilde died at age thirty-three in January 1895, leaving Heurich a widower for a second time even as his brewery continued to prosper and expand.

The brewery had several fires, including a major one in 1892 that convinced Heurich that he needed to build a larger, fire-proof facility.

His business centered in DC, Virginia, and Maryland, and Heurich did not become one of the large shipping breweries like Pabst, Christian Moerlein, Schlitz, or Anheuser-Busch.

[1] In 1900 Heurich and Amelia traveled to the 1900 Paris World's Fair, where his Senate Beer won a silver medal.

The effort failed, partly because many local unions did not see why labor should aid one group of businesses in forcing a price-fixing agreement on another.

[1] Groups such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Anti-Saloon League were gaining support in their campaign to ban making and drinking alcoholic beverages.

Virginia's prohibitionists were slowly making the state dry through local referendums and licensing laws.

[6] Heurich reacted the same way many other brewers did, by trying to market his product as a healthy beverage, and trying to make beer appear family-friendly.

He had a farm in Maryland which he enjoyed, raising dairy cows and spending time with his children and grandchildren.

The Cullen–Harrison Act, passed on March 21, 1933, legalized the sale of beer and wine with an alcohol content of no more than 3.2% by weight, to be effective April 7, 1933.

Unfortunately for consumers, many breweries, including Abner-Drury, rushed their products to market too soon, and the resulting "green (insufficiently aged) beer" turned off customers.

When the Twenty-First Amendment was ratified in December 1933, breweries began producing beers with higher volumes of alcohol.

Too proud to sell his product as vinegar, Heurich had it dumped into the sewers to drain into the Potomac River.