It’s been nearly 28 years since the revival of Delaware’s brewing industry, after a four-decade-long hiatus.
The growth of the state’s craft beverage business in the new millennium has been remarkable and its impact undeniable.
According to the Brewers Association’s 2021 data for Delaware, brewing accounts for nearly $405 million in economic output and provides employment for more than 2,200 workers. These numbers don’t even take into account contributions from the state’s dozen or so producers of cider, mead, spirits and wine.
The Delaware Tourism Office recognized the impactful role the craft beverage industry could play in attracting visitors to the state and began its Beer, Wine & Spirits Trail program in 2015.
The current success of First State breweries recalls the turn of the prior century and the golden age of brewing when beer production was the state’s sixth-largest industry. Those were days of Wilmington’s wealthy beer barons, whose horse-drawn delivery drays loaded with wooden barrels clopped across the city’s cobblestone streets. It was the time when the enormous statue of King Gambrinus, the legendary monarch of beer and familiar Wilmington icon, toasted a thirsty city from an alcove high up on the old Diamond State Brewery.
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The colorful King Gambrinus statue remained in place for 80 years, until it was removed just before the brewery was demolished in 1962 to make way for interstate construction through Wilmington.
Newspaper accounts of the time suggested the king statue would be restored and possibly placed in a local museum. Instead, the sculpture was sold and, for the next decade, found a suburban home in front of the eponymously named King’s Inn on Naamans Road. After the restaurant closed in the early 1970s, the king was placed in storage, outside of public view for the first time in almost a century.
In 1978, the 1-ton, zinc sculpture was dropped while being moved and shattered into dozens of pieces. Miraculously, all of the salvageable pieces were recovered and, in 2014, were given to a group committed to the statue’s renovation.
The nonprofit organization, the Friends of Delaware’s King Gambrinus Statue, kicked off its Restore the King project in 2017. Since then, the group has successfully raised more than a quarter of the campaign’s initial $100,000 goal through charitable private contributions, fundraising events, and the loyal support of Delaware craft beverage producers.
FDGS intends to donate the renovated Gambrinus sculpture to the Delaware History Museum for display and long-term conservation.
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According to Carol Grissom, a Smithsonian statuary expert and author of “Zinc Sculpture in America, 1850-1950,” the 11-foot-tall King Gambrinus statue is believed to be the largest zinc sculpture ever produced for commercial purposes.
The Delaware statue is only one of the four to have survived, out of more than a dozen cast from the same mold. Three of the Gambrinus sculptures are in museums in Baltimore; Syracuse, New York; and Toluca, Mexico, while the other is in a Breinigsville, Pennsylvania, brewery courtyard.
Work on FDGS’s Restore the King project is well underway. FDGS hired a professional firm to scan one of the four known surviving Gambrinus statues and develop an exact 3D model for comparative analysis. In 2022, FDGS partnered with the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation for laser scanning of the sculpture’s nearly 60 extant pieces and production of a 3D digital model, the latter of which will help determine the missing parts that will need to be recast during final restoration.
Aside from being a valuable part of the state’s cultural memory and captivating work of art, the 140-year-old Gambrinus sculpture is the most significant surviving artifact from Delaware’s golden age of brewing.
Restore the King is a fitting tribute to the state’s modern craft beverage industry, and the statue’s renovation symbolizes the industry’s return as a key economic and social driver.
The restored sculpture will serve as a museum touchpoint for broader discussions about industry, immigration, temperance, and other social topics in Delaware.
Restore the King will be successful only with the public’s continued support.
Those interested in learning more about the project or contributing to the campaign should visit RestoreTheKing.com.
John Medkeff is president of the Friends of Delaware’s Gambrinus Statue Inc.
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