Falstaff Brewery

On our way to St. Joseph church on Tulane, Nola and I were passing the old Falstaff brewery building near Broad and Tulane. I remembered seeing a picture a while back that someone had taken of a statue sitting on top of the building. We went to check it out, and there it was.

You won’t notice it while driving down Tulane, nor can you see it from the interstate. I thought the statue was of Falstaff, the Shakespeare character the beer brand was named for. Nola found it was something else and sent me a link to a 2005 Gambit post.

The large gentleman hoisting a stein is King Gambrinus, a 12th century Flemish nobleman who, according to legend, brewed the world’s first barrel of beer. In reality, some form of beer is known to have existed thousand of years earlier. Nevertheless, King Gambrinus — invariably portrayed with foaming goblet held high in mid- toast — has long been established as a symbol of the universal and eternal regard for beer.

King Gambrinus is known as “the patron saint of beer” and for years has been used as the universal symbol of beer and brewing. Many brewers in the late 19th century used his image to promote their products, and life-size statues of the king adorned breweries everywhere.

The tower on top of the building is an interesting item. Lighted letters spell out Falstaff along the shaft; at top is a large lighted ball.

When I was in grammar school, we lived across the river in Algiers. My grandmother lived in Mid City, near the Fairgrounds. We would pass the brewery on the interstate when we went to visit, and I remember the activity of the lights on the tower. Sometimes the top ball would be different colors. The letters themselves would light up from the top to the bottom or bottom to top.

I never knew what it meant, but I remember an advertisement at my grandmothers’s house–on a book of matches or a calendar or flyer–at my grandparents that explained the lights indicated the weather. After that, my brother and I would try to figure out what the lights were trying to say every time we saw them after that. As the Gambit piece explains:

When the light was green, we could expect fair weather, but a red light meant cloudy skies. A flashing red light told of us rain coming. The Falstaff letters lit from the bottom up to signify rising temperatures and lit from top to bottom to indicate dropping temperatures.