When Santa Fe's Fischer Brewery was built in the early 1860s, it included a large underground stone lined cellar used to keep beer cold.  There was a man-made pond just off the Santa Fe river below the brewery where ice was harvested during the winter and placed in the cellar.  In 1890, Fischer financed an ice plant, which caused financial difficulties, causing the brewery to close in 1896.

In 1906, my great-grandfather, Alois Renehan, purchased the brewery, demolished it, and had a large house he named The Willows built on the site.  For the next 35 years the cellar was used for storage, including the equipment needed to maintain an apple orchard next to the main house.  There is a family story that the bar from the Plaza Hotel was stored there while the hotel was being remodeled.  The hotel burned down in 1926.  During this time, he also built the La Vereda complex that is there today.  After Renehan's death in 1928, my grandfather moved into the big house and continued to use the cellar.  In 1942, my father recalled taking all metal objects that were in the cellar out and donating them to an iron war drive.  He said that the bar was still there.  After the war, the road over the cellar was sinking, so my grandfather had the cellar filled and walled up the entrance.  That wall, pictured above, still exists.  As a boy, I remember a depression next to our house which I was told was a ventilation shaft for the cellar.  I was also told to stay away from it.

Today, all traces of the cellar are gone except for the walled-up entrance.  I've often wondered whatever happened to the Palace Hotel bar.  It must have been something! 

Fischer Brewery, 1890, showing location of the cellar

My Father, Dee Lord, in 1938.  The ventilation shaft for the cellar is on the hill over his right shoulder