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A walk through Kinsey in the 1960's


dave ziegler
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When I went to Kinsey in 1966 they had a very large Parking lot and about 600 people worked there on 3 shifts with 24 seven security. Even buildings that were not being used had sprinklers working in them old #12 was protected and there was talk of building a new still next to it. Going in the front on your Left in front was the new bottling house which at one time as the largest one floor Barrel warehouse in the world at that time and Publicker found with its big width and being so long it would make a great Bottling house. Right after you parked you would walk through a high steel gate that looked like the gates to a mansion. It was wrought iron and is still standing on the top it states Linfield Industrial Park! Mr Neuman wanted to call it that because between all the warehouses the ground was landscaped and the grass was kept perfect we always planted new trees and kept everything clean. Going through the gate to your right were all the Old 1892 Kinsey Buildings a House where a Company Man named George Dill lived and a Office for the Plant itself. In that front right area stood the Old #12 Still the boiler rooms 3 boilers two coal one oil silo's for grain and a large old Barn that was the Plant mantaince shop. Then the Old 1892 Kinsey Bottle house the Kinsey Rye Building and 2 Large 6 floor brick and Wood barrel warehouses. On a resent walk through I crawed in one and what they were was all wooden racks with wood planks running up for 6 levels the only way up was to climb wooden ladders or take the Elevater which unlike the 1934 warehouses was a big frieght elvater that was made in the 1890's and up graded if you put one to many barrels as a friend did to me one time when I was running the elevater it would fly down and hit bottom a little frightening. You had to be fairly thin to get in the board walks to roll the barrels out, and I remember when I first went in one seeing most of the barrels were marked in the 1950's on the heads. When I got in the one old warehouse to look around on my most resent walk I saw my Dads Nickname on one of the Old up rights it said Ziggy 1952 so Knew it was him as he worked there then. Farther along the front right are two more old Brick and Wood warehouses and if you look down throught the Racks you can see the Heat pipes and the sprinkler pipes they even had them heated a little and as I have said everything was sprinkled. So it was one of the safest Distillery's in its time. I found papers from 1956 where they did fire control tests every month and they always started with the old buildings first. The fire House was right next to one of the old Warehouses and large water tanks. Publicker even had Fire Hydrents in the woods out back, all the grounds had hydrents and piping everywhere. We also had a Very Old Mack Fire truck and I found the title to it one time looking around. I will contiue this tour in the next writting and take you through the main plant on down to the river. It is to bad that someone did not turn the front into a history museum and the grounds into a park as it is one of the most peaceful places you could go. Even when we were running at full tilt it was always very peaceful with cool air from the river and lots of wild life walking around so its name was very true, Linfield Industrial ( PARK. )

Dave Z

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  • 4 weeks later...

Thanks for all the info Dave. I did some searchin for some pictures of Linfied Industrial Park and it seems there are plenty to choose from.

Was the shutdown of the plant at all related to the nuke site up the river a bit? I bet that could make for some funny green booze.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Thanks for all the info Dave. I did some searchin for some pictures of Linfied Industrial Park and it seems there are plenty to choose from.

Was the shutdown of the plant at all related to the nuke site up the river a bit? I bet that could make for some funny green booze.

Jeff the Nuke plant had nothing to do with the plant closing it was because they very losing lots of money allot to do the smaller companys with smaller overhead costs and they were pricing their products at very reasonable prices and still just could not cover the High costs they had!

Dave Z

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