The Kreische Brewery State Historic Site Collections: An Evaluation of Collection Scope and Condition Assessment

The Kreische Brewery (located in LaGrange) was one of the first commercial breweries in Texas. Founded by a German immigrant and stonemason, Heinrich Ludwig Kreische, and his family in the 1860s, the ruins of the grounds, consisting of the brewery and the Kreische family home, are now an historic site under the purview of the Historic Sites Division of the Texas Historical Commission (THC). The Kreische Brewery State Historic Site Collections include around 375 historical objects and approximately 19 linear feet of records stored at the THC’s Curatorial Facility for Archival Research (CFAR) in Austin and around 1,200 objects at the historical site itself. The collections have changed hands four different times, so THC’s staff would like to gain intellectual and physical control of their collection. I assisted in this process by performing a collection inventory and assessment, which includes recommendations for future preservation, use, and outreach.