Craft Brewery Built in a Century-old Brick Building

Craft Brewery Built in a Century-old Brick Building

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Halfway Crooks Beer is a new craft brewery built in a century-old brick building located at 60 Georgia Avenue in Atlanta’s Summerhill neighborhood.

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The name, Halfway Crooks, is a nod to 90’s hip-hop artist Mobb Deep’s famous song, “Shook Ones,” and also pays homage to the crooks used by sheepherders. The clients, an electrical engineer by training who made a name for himself in the homebrewing scene, and a trained Brewmaster who grew up in Belgium on a sheep farm, came up with the intriguing, contrast-filled name.

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Cozy, casual, and a little bit weird is how the architects imagined Halfway Crooks Beer feeling to guests. Like the pilsners and lagers that the brewery specializes in, space strives for comfort and light-hearted accessibility while at once maintaining an elevated sense of craft and nuance. The design draws heavily from the biographies and personalities of the brewer-owners.

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The grandmotherly patterns and mismatched furniture reference the loved and lived-in Belgian café’s where the client spent many of his younger days. Happily woven into that fabric are hi-fi equipment and techie screens featuring Bainbridge’s glitchy computer coding and graphics by local branding company, Office of Brothers.

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The architects pulled the color palette directly from the old interior plaster walls. They left them largely untouched for their lovely patina. The new color palette is also a hint to the building’s lingering memories which long precede the brewery. The climate and humidity-controlled barrel room are wrapped in traditional molding pieces stacked unconventionally to create an undulating baroque-like mass, with glazed voids providing views to the aging beer. Finishes range from handmade Mexican tile to antique Belgian wallpaper and classic marble counters and baseboards.

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Finally, the brewery also features an upstairs patio that includes a second bar clad in charred Shi Sugi Ban siding and a new retractable roof system that can be opened and closed according to the season and the weather. The louvered roof system serves as a brise-soleil to cool the space by tempering the sunlight while strong shadows play along the old brick walls.

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Project by Square Feet Studio

Photography by Andrew Thomas Lee