Dec. 2025
The Schlafly Tap Room and The East Wing of The White House were both built in 1902. This was the same year Friedrich Trump married Elisabeth Christ in Kallstadt, Germany on August 26.
Three years later, in 1905, Friedrich was deported from Germany to The United States for having evaded military service. On October 11 of that year Friedrich, Jr., aka Fred, was born in The Bronx. Thanks to The Fourteenth Amendment young Fred was immediately granted birthright citizenship by The United States. Because his mother was already pregnant with him when she entered the country, he was what many people now call an “anchor baby.”
Some alert readers (ARs) might reasonably quibble that The Schlafly Tap Room could not have been built in 1902 given that Schlafly Beer wouldn’t be brewed until 89 years later, in 1991. Fair enough. To clarify, the building at 2100 Locust Street that we now occupy was originally built as the home of Lambert Deacon Hull Printing Company, which was co-founded by Arthur W. Lambert, whose family owned Lambert Pharmacal Company on the other side of Locust Street.
Arthur’s relative Albert Bond Lambert was the President of Lambert Pharmacal, which was best known for marketing Listerine as a cure for halitosis. Albert was also an early promoter of aviation and in 1925 bought the land in Kinloch, MO where St. Louis Lambert International Airport is now located. He later led the effort to finance Charles Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic in The Spirit of St. Louis in 1927.
ARs who are versed in sports history will recall 1927 as the year Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs, setting a record that many thought would never be broken. Nearly a century later Ruth’s 1927 New York Yankees are still regarded by some as the best team ever in the history of baseball.
On September 22, 1927 Gene Tunney won boxing’s heavyweight championship of the world by knocking out Jack Dempsey at Soldier Field in Chicago. The bout came to be known as The Long Count Fight because Dempsey did not immediately return to a neutral corner after knocking Tunney down. This delay allowed Tunney more time to recover before he resumed fighting and ultimately won.
Our building survived longer than The East Wing of The White House.
One week later, on September 29, which happened to be my father’s 15th birthday, St. Louis was hit by a tornado that killed more people and caused even more devastation than the storm on May 16 that damaged my home and thousands of other structures in our region.
Over Memorial Day Weekend in 1927 Fred Trump was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens, the borough in which his son Donald would be born 19 years later on June 14, 1946.
Queens is also the borough that includes New York State Assembly District 36, which was represented by Zohran Mamdani when he was elected Mayor of New York City.
In addition to their shared ties to Queens, Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani have at least one other thing in common. Neither one drinks beer.
Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda on October 18, 1991 and spent the first few years of his childhood there before moving to Capetown, South Africa with his parents. In 2009 he applied for admission to Columbia University and checked a box on the application describing his heritage in part as African-American.
To some ARs this might seem to be a reasonable description. He had become a citizen of Uganda in 1991 by virtue of having born there with a father who was also a citizen. He had spent the first seven years of his life on the continent of Africa. Since being naturalized as an American citizen in 2018 he has been a dual citizen of Uganda and The United States.
There are critics, however, who insist that an individual who was born in Africa and now lives in America is not a real African-American. This status is reserved for Americans whose ancestors left Africa over 200 years ago.
While there may be some debate about Zohran Mamdani’s heritage, there’s no disputing the fact that he was elected Mayor of New York by a decisive margin on November 4 and is expected to take the oath of office on January 1, 2026, six days after The Schlafly Tap Room celebrates its 34th anniversary.
Schlafly Beer is now the same age as the mayor-elect of New York City. And The Schlafly Tap Room has now survived longer than The East Wing of The White House, which was demolished shortly after Mamdani’s 34th birthday.
Tom Schlafly
Chairman
Schlafly | The Saint Louis Brewery
