Waterloo’s first brewery, the Koechel brewery, was built at this location in 1847 by John and Elizabeth Koechel, likely as a wooden structure, and was replaced by a brick building in 1852. John Koechel operated the brewery until the mid 1870’s, and in 1881 John Michael Schorr and Henry Wilmesmeier purchased the property for $8,000.00. J. Michael Schorr had learned brewing in Germany from a family line of brew masters dating to 1532, and after he and Wilmesmeier bought the Koechel brewery, the original building was torn down and replaced with a three-story brick brewery with three underground fermenting cellars. Known as the Michael Schorr Brewing Company, the complex encompassed 117-123 North Main Street and extended west to what is now Church Street. At 117 North Main stood the Schorr residence, the building still standing today, with two parlors on the south end, a kitchen and dining room on the north side, and its original center door on Main Street. The brewery complex also included offices, a brick courtyard, brewing and bottling buildings, a steam power plant, horse stables, a wagon shed, coal storage, and a large vegetable garden. Michael Schorr also constructed Schorr Lake at present-day Lakeview Park to supply water and ice for the brewery, added a large cork-lined icehouse, and installed a private pumping system because the lake was more than a mile away; as a result, the Schorrs were the first in Monroe County to have indoor plumbing and electricity. Railroad tracks laid through the center of the complex supplied coal. During Prohibition from 1920 to 1933, the brewery tried unsuccessfully to survive by producing legal “near beer,” and operations stopped. Before Prohibition was repealed, the brewery renovated to resume beer production, but it could not recover profits, and parts of the property on the west side were sold while the house, office, and Main Street buildings remained in Schorr family ownership. The Schorr home space is believed to have first been used as a tavern in the early 1940’s, when J. Oscar Schorr, son of J. Michael, lived upstairs and operated a tavern downstairs, followed by Carl Bode Jr., a great-grandchild of J. Michael. The building later passed through several owners until about 1960, when Dorthy Welsch bought it and operated “Welsch’s.” In March 1973, John Pottoff and his father, Lanny, began operating “John’s,” and in 1985 the Potoffs sold the building to Jeff and Denise Vogt, who continued the tradition by opening “JV’s Downton Bar and Grill.” After the 9/11 terrorist attack, Joe Krump and Denise Vogt painted the American flag mural on the north side of JV’s.