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The fermenting room of the Bergner and Engels brewery, Philadelphia, PA, 1888.
Credit: Courtesy of Larry Handy, www.eastcoastbrew.com
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Philadelphia's "Brewerytown" neighborhood boasted the largest concentration of breweries in the United States. With large casks of beer fermented in building after building, a newspaperman of the day declared that "the air here smells like vaporized bread."