Yesterday's view on GDP was the back yard of Oden Brewing, the part behind the houses on the west side of the building. Today, we share the facade of Oden Brewing, located at 802 West Gate City Boulevard. If you are local, likely, you have noticed this this brick structure- vacant for years. The building has one of those fee- good stories of the younger generation preserving a little bit of the past. This story is even sweeter given the Oden family, brothers Bill and John, and their families, have resorted the building that once housed their great grandfather's bottling plant. According to their website, "William L. "Fate" Oden operated his soft drink bottling plant in the towering industrial building formerly known as Buffalo Rock Bottling Plant."
At the height of the bottling of soft drinks, in the late 40s early 50s, there were ten bottling plants in Greensboro (read the 1998 News & Record article, here). It also appears that Buffalo Rock actually dates back to 1901 in Birmingham, Alabama, and that the above building would have been part of the network of Buffalo Rock bottlers and distributers. While plastic has long since beat out glass in the soft drink bottling industry, beer is still bottled in glass (or cans) and the Bill and John Oden family bottling beer in the very site that their great grandfather built a bottling business. Somehow, that story just seems for fitting in spring- the key season for rebirth and renewal.
That's a building with character.
Posted by: William Kendall | Tuesday, March 30, 2021 at 08:59 PM