Oktoberfest

Among the available libations at the J. Rieger & Co. distillery in Kansas City’s East Bottoms is a specially brewed lager, Heim Bier – a homage to a pre-Prohibition family brewery that once operated and thrived on the site. A What’s Your KCQ reader recently enjoyed a pour and inquired about the name.

What’s the Heim history? It traces to Austria, where Ferdinand Heim Sr. was born in 1830. He and his brother Michael were trained by their father as ropemakers, emigrated to the United States when Ferd was 21, and tried their hands at a number of ventures before purchasing a small brewery in Manchester, Missouri, near St. Louis. They were part of a massive influx of German immigrants who settled in Missouri in the 19th century, drawn to the fertile land along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Producing German lager proved to be a viable business. The Heims found their way to East St. Louis, Illinois, where they opened the Heim & Brother Brewery (later named the Heim Brewing Company). Michael passed away at an early age in 1883, and Ferd’s eldest son Joseph stepped into his uncle’s role.

In a recent article about the history of Municipal Stadium, we learned that the former home of the Kansas City Athletics and first home of the Royals and the Chiefs was originally called Muehlebach Field. We also learned that it was named after Blues owner, George Muehlebach Jr. A reader noticed the same name on a downtown hotel sign and asked What’s Your KCQ?, a collaboration between the Kansas City Public Library and The Kansas City Star, to explain who the Muehlebachs were.

The family patriarch, George Muehlebach Sr., was born in Aargau, Switzerland, in 1833 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1854. Starting out in Lafayette, Indiana, he and three brothers — John, Peter, and Francis X. — eventually found their way to the bustling town of Westport, Missouri.

On the first weekend of October, thousands of Kansas Citians will raise a glass – or perhaps more fitting, a stein – to celebrate German heritage during KC Oktoberfest at Crown Center. It will be two days of Bavarian-style food, music, and, yes, bier. The latest installment of What’s Your KC Q?, a partnership between The Star and the Kansas City Public Library, tells the story of German immigrant named Martin Keck who operated a popular beer garden in the 1870s.

A century later, the property he developed would become the site of one of the city’s most iconic destinations: Crown Center. Reader Lori Moore put KCQ on Keck’s trail, asking: “What was originally on the site of the Westin Hotel at the corner of Main and Pershing Road?”