The Peter Doelger Brewery in New York City was started in 1859 by Peter Doelger, a coppersmith immigrant from Germany. Mr. Doelger came right at the perfect time to make his mark in brewing, when the Croton Reservoir System was completed in NYC, providing fresh water for brewers to craft their products.
The breweries beer must have been pretty good, considering he was the leading brewery in the city in the 1870’s already after just starting out with a lot of competition in 1859. Success came very quickly as you can see on this tip tray. The Doelger brewery won multiple awards at some very prestigious events in no time at all.
This particular tray illustrates a beautiful American eagle along with Grand Prize Medals for events in Washington, D.C, and New York. The location of the brewery from 55th to 56th Streets and 1st Avenue to A Avenue are also boldly featured on the tray.
I find the “Expressly for the Home” slogan to be interesting, because history says the Doelger Brewery eventually lost market share and went out of business because they stayed too close to their NYC roots, while other breweries started moving into larger regional or national distribution. Apparently the leaders of the brewery did not feel they needed to expand beyond their regional base while the market evolved around them for both national and global expansion interests. As a result, the once thriving NYC industry stalwart shut down for good in 1947 due to the more competitive environment in their backyard and their much reduced sales volume. In hindsight, one can conjecture the brewery should have remained less focused on their home market in order to survive. But why they didn’t foresee this trend is interesting at best. Today with resurgence of the craft brewing industry and with many of the craft brewers interest in only servicing their local area only you can surmise the Doelger brewery was perhaps ahead of their time?
Nowadays the Peter Doelger Brewery is remembered mostly through their vast array of advertising giveaways the used before prohibition including this 1900 era tray. It is very easy to find a lot of pieces from the breweries early history given their commanding presence in the New York market before prohibition started and shortly after it was repealed.