A look back at the time when Falls City Beer was the most beloved brand in the Huntington region.
By James E. Casto
HQ 126 | SUMMER 2024
Falls City was long a popular brand with beer drinkers in the Huntington area. A case of it can even be seen in a scene from We Are Marshall, the movie about the 1970 crash that claimed the lives of the Marshall University football team and local boosters.
Teddy Roosevelt was living in the White House in 1905 when the Falls City Brewing Company was organized by tavern operators in Louisville, Kentucky. The name was taken from a nickname for Louisville — Falls City — which was derived from Louisville’s position at the scenic Falls of the Ohio.
The new brewing company was a bit different from many breweries in the United States, as it was not family owned. Instead, it was organized to break a monopoly. In 1901, Louisville’s biggest brewers had formed the Central Consumers Company that made virtually all the city’s beer. At the same time, the big brewers owned nearly all the buildings where taverns rented space.
This meant the big brewers, acting as landlord and supplier at the same time, had the tavern operators more or less at their mercy. This practice, while common in the United Kingdom, was later outlawed in this country.
The new company immediately prospered. Ultimately it would become Louisville’s biggest seller of beer.
When most brewing companies were forced out of business at the onset of Prohibition in 1919, Falls City was able to not only remain open but also earn a modest profit. Operating as the Falls City Ice and Beverage Company, it sold ice, soft drinks and a nonalcoholic brew known as “near beer.”
Once beer production resumed, Falls City was widely distributed in the Ohio Valley, welcomed by customers in Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee and West Virginia.
In Huntington, Falls City became a favored brand because of a local family-run distributorship. North Pole Distributing Co., located at 1140 Rear Seventh Ave., was founded in 1937; and over the course of four decades it was run by the Lombardo, Russo and Linsenmeyer families. Scores of Huntington residents showed their support for the well-known families by becoming regular Falls City Beer customers. The beer’s popularity in the area during those 40 years led to its special appearance in the motion picture We Are Marshall.
In 1977, Falls City contracted with Billy Carter, brother of President Jimmy Carter, to market a signature brew that would capitalize on Billy’s fame as the beer-drinking black sheep of the Carter family. Realizing that a regional brewery couldn’t fulfill national demand for the product, Falls City licensed several other independent regional breweries to brew and package Billy Beer. Initially a big seller, Billy Beer quickly fell out of favor, and in 1978 it was discontinued.
Falls City became a favored brand because of a local family-run distributorship. Founded in 1937, North Pole Distributing was operated by the popular Lombardo and Russo families for more than 40 years.
Throughout the 1970s, Falls City sales steadily declined, and in 1978 the company posted its first ever financial loss. The Falls City board elected to cease production rather than fight the onslaught of the big national brands (Budweiser, Miller, etc.) that were steadily gaining momentum in Falls City’s core markets. The company sold other breweries the rights to brew and sell Falls City, but before long the beer was no longer produced.
But the Falls City story doesn’t end there. With craft beers now surging in popularity, the brand has been revived as a small batch specialty beer, widely available in and around Louisville.
Paul Newman and Falls City
In 1966, film star Paul Newman was in Huntington preparing for his upcoming role in the movie Cool Hand Luke. His character was a war hero from Appalachia, so Newman spent four days as the guest of Andy Houvouras, who drove him around so he could meet local folks to tape record and study their accents. Each evening Newman would go to the Houvouras home and entertain Andy, his wife Pat and their seven children by sharing stories about his life in Hollywood. His favorite beer at the time was Budweiser, which he drank each night. But on Sunday evening, in the midst of one of his stories, Newman discovered he had consumed the last of his precious Bud. This presented a problem because at that time local grocery stores didn’t sell beer on Sundays. However, the Houvourases’ eldest son Drew offered a solution — his girlfriend’s family owned the local Falls City Beer distributorship, so he went out and fetched a 12-pack of the brew. It wasn’t Budweiser, but Newman liked it. Later Drew drove Newman back to the UpTowner Inn where Newman was staying, and the two passed some time in Newman’s hotel room swilling Falls City and discussing world history.
