For more than 70 years the Pabst Blue Ribbon [beer] bottle graced the skyline for Newark and surrounding towns and commuters of the GSP. Today's Star Ledger had an article explaining where it went. How interesting to know more about it's history and the attention that it's retirement has garnered. For further reading go to: Click here: Landmark giant Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle lands in Newark - Newark, New Jersey Local News | Newark Live - NJ.com

:::: Although not an important memory about Pabst, I can remember that all the beer drinkers in my family referred to that stuff as "Graveyard Juice" because it was believed the water was pumped from under the adjacent huge cemetary. I know, disgusting :-)

No doubt there was seepage. I remember the distinct smell as you came into the area - I suppose the yeast/hops fermation let it off. In fact that's what caused me years back to realize the huge bottle went missing. While driving to the airport I realized the air smelled different. Is the cemetery over there Fairmount/Fairview? I ask because I wrote them a while back (email) after reading somewhere the cemetery was closed...how do you close a cemetery? I guess the office was unmanned?? I wonder where you'd go to find records of interments...anyone know?

Wasn't there a flying running horse sign there as well? I recall that was one of the landmarks we saw as a kid on the highway and we knew that we were close to home.

Before Newark Academy left and the Academy Spires went up - I recall going up on our roof and seeing the phone company building and the Pru in downtown - we could also see the Empire State building at night out our back door.
Till this day- I never get tired of looking at the NY skyline

Thread drift- sorry - please carry on.

There are several cemetaries near the old brewery site....Holy Sepulchre is the one along the Parkway but at it's southern edge is a Jewish Cemetary and possibly the continuation of that one across So. Orange Ave. in the bewery's backyard. Then there is Fairmount Cemetary spread from Central Ave to So. Orange Ave. a few blocks east.

My partner on the PD first worked for the phone company and used to work in that area in the manholes stripping wires. He said there were many times when they had to abandon the manholes because they were passing out from inhaling too much of the formaldehyde vapors. So it's possible that you not only got 'stewed' from drinking Pabst, but also 'pickled'!

My father always claimed the reason the beer taste good was the water that was used. He drank Shaffer Beer that was made in Brooklyn, NY. When another brewery was opened in another state, he claimed he could taste the difference.
Question: I remember when I was growing up there were a number of breweries around. Does anyone know the names? Eileen

There is a "Beers of Newark" bar at the Prudential Center. My dad also drank Schaefer. I remember Pabst won the ribbon in 1893, now it is here , the original beer, no longer a novelty. But "Beers of Newark" has them all from Budweiser to Ballantine to Pabst and more.

I worked for Pabst in the summers in the 60's....it was a great paying job for college students....during the 1967 riots they had to hide the trucks that were loaded with beer...one of the guys who worked with me was Jimmy Byrnes who was known as the "rabbit" because he made his deliveries so fast...I think he actually became a lawyer for Pabst! Hey John.what happened to the photo I submitted?

I worked there during the summer of '65, while waiting to go in the army after Seton Hall. The thing I recall most was the "beer breaks" when you could drink as much as you could pour down your throat before going back to work on the line. I don't think anyone ever left work at that place sober. :-)

I heard you got to drink it before it was pasteurized when it tasted better and actually had some food value.

Sorry guys the water for Pabst came from where all Newark water comes from , North Jersey Water in Wanaque and the Newark Water Shed in West Milford. I remember there was a big hadue about the water main connection at South Orange and Grove Street. Later there was a criminal investigation as to who got what in payoffs. Yes I remember the "beer Breaks" in the tap room of of Grove Street. As a young detective my partner and I use to go there and make "Business visits" to the workers having lunch. They call it community relations now.

I thought the Pabst Bottle was originally a Hoffman soda bottle but was changed when Pabst took over the building.

Dear Thomas: You are correct. It was a soda bottle before it became a beer bottle. Eileen

Highlight of our family Sunday drive was my sister and I pointing out "THE BIG BOTTLE". We called it that. Hoffman"s Soda. We were about 7 and 4 years old.

"The prettiest girl I ever saw was sipping Hoffmans right through a straw..."

For some reason I think that it might had been either root beer or sasparella.

I just read the Ledger article and it was originally Ginger Ale.

Dear Joe, You are correct. Aunt Eileen

If I remember right the beer breaks were 20 minutes but sometimes you could stretch them into a half hour or 45 minutes...but then who wanted to go back to work!

For those who remember the big bottle, it indeed was a landmark when coming back home to Newark from the Shore. Also, I remember it as a beautiful soda bottle, before it got painted an ugly brown that was not really in the shape of a beer bottle. And yes, Hoffman's really was a good soda. Another piece of our past that went 'south'.

The old Westinghouse Factory on Orange Street near Broad Street has been completely leveled removing another eye sore. That area is pretty nice with the baseball stadium, the renovated train station, the light rail the new Washington Park building, new parking decks, and the demolition of the Lincoln Hotel. A few steps North is Washinton Park, the Newark Museum, the Newark Library, North Star Academy Charter School - one of the top three in the state, and Saint Phillips Academy. Big improvement from the 1970's.

Now,if only they could renovate the residents.

The Lincoln Motel is gone, you say? I have several interesting memories from that place.

There was this he-she prostitute from down there, name of Jorge. Last I saw him was in the E.R. at Presbyterian Hospital. Seems one of his toys got tangled up in his fishnet stockings and was propelled into the nether region of his anatomy. He was there to get it extracted.

One Sunday morning the dispatchers got a call from a frantic female, babbling about a body in a car. We got the assignment; after an extensive search (she had the location wrong) we came across a Yellow Cab, the driver dead behind the wheel with his pants halfway down his thighs. This was right near the Lincoln. We soon surmised what must've happened. He was down there getting serviced when his female trollop (or maybe it was Jorge) feels him slump over onto her. Thinking he's gettin' more frisky, she raises her head and says "Not for no fit-teen dollahs you don't!", or some other sweet nothings, whispered at times of such deep commitment. Then, to her dismay she realizes he's dead and scampers off to use the phone. I guess you could say he came and went at the same time.

Then there was the cop, a sergeant from one of the nearby smaller towns who had a strong enough urge (or maybe just enough vodka) that he ended up with one of the girls (or Jorge? Please, no) at The Lincoln on duty, his marked radio car and uniformed driver waiting in the parkig lot. In another case of spontaneous combustion, he too had a heart attack and died in the middle of festivities. Another distraught call to the dispatcher; I wasn't around for this one but heard the story. Our guys went down there, dressed the body up in his uniform, put him in the front passenger seat of his police car, and told his driver to take him the hell back to suburbia and call in his heart attack as soon as they got back to their town. Nothing was ever heard about it so I guess it went okay.

You can't make this stuff up.

The salt of the Earth.

Deregulation ain't bad :)

Deregulation? Que pasa, Jen?

Coming from a family who had a Newark Police Officer I was aware of the old methods employed by investigating officers. It was more about justice then regulations.

:::: Sometimes the subject of the thread gets way off topic, but this is just despicable.

As far as I know, there's nothing engraved in stone, so to speak, that says a thread has to remain dead-on with its original topic. Very often the subject will shift to something different, in a one-thing-leads-to-another sort of way, just like a real conversation sometimes does. I know of no protocol to the contrary.
Despicable; didn't Daffy Duck used to say that in the cartoons?

Ahhh did we go off thread - I initiated the topic - have I offended someone? I thought the Daffy Duck comment was a funny...

My father in law was the salt of the earth. 35 years with the NPD.

The Hoffman Soda Bottle was a Newark landmark. So was the Westinghouse Building. Riverfront Stadium ,the NJ PAC and the Prudential Center are current landmarks.
Soon the new Schools Stadium will join them. Can;t wait to attend a game there. There is a new Essex county super high School league. I hope Barringer will revive the rivalry with East Orange, as in our youth.

The 98-year old precinct in the South Ward is being replaced by a new 55 million dollar building to be built on the corner of Bergen and Clinton Avenues. I don't think anyone will complain about this one. I am sure the officers deserve a state of the art facility. Article in today's Star-ledger.

I worked out of the West District at 10 17th Ave, cor. Livingston St, for 4-5 years in the early 80's. The third floor held a gym, long since fallen into disuse, which was pressed into service as a locker room. There were skylights in the ceiling with broken glass due to debris heaved off the roof of the projects across the street. A family of pigeons took up residence, nesting up there among the girders; you'd here them cooing as you geared up for work. And, oh, the droppings- not exactlty a morale builder.

It's too bad, though no surprise, that those old precincts weren't properly maintained. They have an architectural character, a certain grandeur, that will never be duplicated in any modern facility. And, boy, if those walls could talk . . .

Drove down S. Orange Avenue Thursday. The old beer plant is now an empty lot. Saw a massive new school almost completed where the low rise projects were on S. Orange Avenue next ot Parkway. Boylands court or something.

Incredible turf ball fields at West Side Park with scoreboards and lights. There is a new police precinct across the street, but still as bad a neigborhood as it was in May of 1965 when St. Anne's baseball team and fans chased Tony Parisi and his SRL baseball teammates
and their van out of the park. Jack
Jones was the coach.
To my horrow the bulldozers are tearing down an old favorite haunt ED'S DINER Heller Parkway and Sixth Street. It had been taken over by burger king and is being torn down to build a better Burger King. Recall hanging out there in mid-60's with Benny, big Mike, and Raymond. (Ed's dinner, that was). First onion rings I ever had. Had bullet proof glass, so draw your own conclusions. Lot of friends of ours and friends of mine hanging out in hi roll shirts. I loved that diner.

WOW - I did not know that. As many times I saw that landmark, I often wondered who and how they did that? And all the while, I was in living in the neighborhood of a modern day da Vinci!!

How long did it take him and how did he do it?

All the best to you Linda.

That bottle was very important to me and my family because my dad painted the entire bottle twice. You could imagine how excited I would get driving past it on the parkway so many times all these years later especially when a friend was in the car with me.

See why I don't go on this site much? Don't think anyone ever reads my messages not to mention replying or adding a comment!

Linda...I sent you a response by e-mail. Could possibly use your help with a project. It IS in response to your post.

WaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaH WaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaH

Frank must be devastated. He had to wait a month and a half for a response to his post. Frank, we're here for you.

it was THE HOFFMAN SODA bottle.

Correct, Frank. Erected in the 1930s, Hoffman's big bottle promoted their Pale Dry Ginger Ale. When Pabst bought the property in 1945, the bottle was promoted to Blue Ribbon.



Photo courtesy NPL

John thanks so much for taking the time to post the photo. It really made me smile and feel a warmth from my "Dad" surround me!

Remember it as a soda bottle in the mid-50's. Must have changed after that. Remember the jingle "PABST WON THE RIBBON IN 1893, NOW IT IS HERE, AN ORIGINAL BEER,NO LONGER A MEMORY". My dad drank Schaffer.

Dan sends in this combo photo: