The Willibrand Brewery at the west end of Alexandria

At the west end of Main Street in Alexandria, set 80 feet back from the road on the south side, stands a brick building, two stories raised to two and a half by dormers, that the Historic American Buildings Survey recorded in 1988 as the Henry Willibrand Brewery. By then it had been cut into four apartments and no brewing equipment was left inside. The survey counted it among the few buildings in the borough that still stand as a reminder of its industrial past.

The survey could not settle the year it went up. Willibrand advertised a brewery in Alexandria in 1824, but he did not take title to these two lots until 1829, when he bought them from Dr. James Trimble and his wife. In 1833 he advertised in the Huntingdon Gazette that a new brewery was running, headed by a brewer from Philadelphia. In 1835 he drowned in the canal lock while filling in for a sick lockkeeper.

Henry and John Fockler took the property in 1840. The county's 1991 inventory of industrial sites adds that their deed describes a brick building thought to be the one still standing, and that the 1850 census counted the Fockler brewery's output at 400 barrels of beer and 1,011 barrels of ale and porter. Africa's 1883 county history remembered a large brewery run at Alexandria by Henry Fockler some years before, its building long unused by the time he wrote.

The two records disagree on when brewing stopped. The survey found the business run as the Alexandria Brewery in 1873 and allowed that the site may have brewed until about 1880. The 1991 inventory doubts the business outlived Henry Fockler's sale of 1856, since no later tax or census record of production turned up. A sheriff's deed of 1898 described the property as a former brew house occupied as a residence.

The front wall is red brick laid in Flemish bond. In 1976 the building had three chimneys; the survey found one, on the west gable end.

In 1824 Willibrand advertised his brewery in Alexandria, possibly at a site previous to this one. In an 1833 Huntingdon Gazette advertisement, Willibrand announced that his new brewery was operating in Alexandria, headed by a brewer from Philadelphia.Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, Henry Willibrand Brewery, written data pages, HABS PA-5409 data pages, report page 3 (PDF page 4) · character 5,867 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · Library of Congress survey record, read in full

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