Building the Red Star Yeast plant
the air. Sadly, it was that odor and pol- lution that ultimately resulted in the demise of the plant. It was closed on April 15, 2003.
The site had been a yeast factory at
least since the 1890’s. Originally, Con- sumer’s Yeast & Vinegar Works occupied a small portion of the block, but by 1912 it covered one quarter of the block, which it shared with the Washington Brewery, later the Golden West Brewery. Around 1956, Red Star acquired Con- sumer’s Yeast. In 1962, Red Star Yeast became a Di- vision of Universal Foods and was the site of the first commercially-produced yeast for wine. That year they distrib- uted baker’s yeast to eleven states and Pacific Rim markets. Over time the fa- cility started producing more bulk liquid yeast for commercial bakeries, which was less wasteful than dry powdered yeast, but unlike dry yeast has a short shelf life and entails refrigeration. Molasses, made from sugar beets and
cane, was shipped in by rail. Other in- bound traffic included empty cans and silica in boxcars. Spur tracks flanked the west end of the plant in front of the cooling towers, as well as the east end, which serviced the brewery.
Preliminary to the modeling project I
had taken over 100 photographs of the building, assisted by then Southern Pa- cific Railroad’s Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen General Chairman, George Jones, and the plant’s manager, Nick Bontempo. It was Nick who told me that one test tube of yeast could produce 500,000 pounds of yeast in one week. Red Star Yeast was comprised of multiple buildings. The storage and dryer facility, however, had been de- molished by the time Tullock Construc- tion issued blue prints for modifica- tions in September, 1976, not included in my model. The blueprints given me by Mr. Bontempo bear a date of 6-16- 59, by the J. L. Long Company.
The
plant was cut in half when BART was constructed, and was then rebuilt par- allel to the BART tracks.
Overview of the plant
Interior blueprints of the second floor show six molasses tanks in Build- ing No. 1, and a wide variety of interior details in the other buildings. They in- clude a hot water tank, work bench, nine cream tanks, four fermenters, a hydrochloric acid pan, yeasting tank, filter cloth locker, Shiver filter press, ammonia tanks, a sulfuric acid tank, two pitching vessels, two foil feed tanks, a bake lab, bacteria lab, foil cut- ting room/filter press, and an office. In the old days, some yeast was sold retail in one ounce wrapped foil, hence the foil feeds.
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Consumer Yeast Co. was the original resident of the building, as seen in the vintage photo. The north side of the structure (middle) features galvanized sides modeled using sheet styrene. Much of the intricate apparatus on the roof (above) is located here. Some of the pieces, such as the curtained shed and cooling tower, took repeated efforts to build.
OCTOBER 2012
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