English: As seen in March 2023, the icehouse (right foreground, including partially legible ghost sign) and cold storage facility (left background) are the oldest extant portions of the former William Simon Brewery at 143 Emslie Street (corner Clinton Street) on the East Side of Buffalo, New York. The buildings date to 1883, but the roots of the business trace back thirty years prior to that, when John Schusler, a German-born immigrant previously employed as a cabinetmaker, switched careers and entered the brewing industry. Schusler died in 1888, whereupon William Simon - a fellow German who had most recently worked for brewer Gerhard Lang in an executive and advisory capacity - purchased a stake in the Schusler brewery. Simon became sole owner in 1894, though a condition of the sale was that the brewery and its products were to retain the Schusler name until six years had passed. Newly renamed after the turn of the century, the company debuted its flagship Simon Pure lager soon after, and muddled through Prohibition by manufacturing a variety of "near beers" and other nonalcoholic cereal beverages under the Nomis brand name as well as leasing out space in the partially idle manufacturing plant to other companies; the Simon family's stake in the Copland Brewing Company of Toronto, where beer of full alcohol content remained legal, also helped keep the business afloat. Business came roaring back after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, and continued producing Simon Pure lager and Old Abbey Ale until 1973, the last remaining independent brewer in Buffalo before the onset of the craft beer boom of the 21st century. Architecturally speaking, despite a number of later alterations (most visibly, the bottom portion of the façade on the Clinton Street side), the buildings remain fairly good examples of the era's industrial architecture: the rough-textured exterior, round-arched windows, decorative corbelling undergirding the slightly projecting upper portion of the façade, and overall stout massing are all indicative of the Romanesque Revival style that was then in fashion. The complex is currently vacant.