File:Utica, New York - 01 - West End Brewery as seen from the corner of Edward and Varick Streets - 20210828.jpg

English: The West End Brewing Company, otherwise known as the F.X. Matt Brewing Company or the Saranac Brewery, at 811 Edward Street in Utica, New York, as seen from the corner of Varick Street on an August 2021 afternoon. The company traces its history to 1855, when Charles Bierbauer established what was originally called the West Utica Brewery; the current facility is a massive complex the oldest portion of which dates back to 1873, but most of what's visible here were later additions from the decade before and after the turn of the century. Three years after Bierbauer's death in 1885, the brewery was acquired by former employee Francis Xavier Matt, who along with his successors in the same family took what was then the smallest of Utica's 12 breweries, with 12 employees and a capacity of 4,000 barrels a year, into what's today the largest brewery in Central New York by far, the 15th-largest in the United States, and one of a very few of America's legacy regional brewers to have both survived Prohibition and remained independent in the face of the post-Prohibition trend toward mass-market consolidation. The F. X. Matt Brewing Company, as it was later renamed, managed that feat by doing several things: first and foremost, by riding out Prohibition manufacturer of soft drinks (namely the "Utica Club" brand of soda that proved very popular in the region); then, once alcohol became legal again, by harnessing the popularity of the Utica Club name in reusing it as the name of its new flagship beer; thirdly, through innovative marketing that went on the offensive by encouraging Uticans to take civic pride in their hometown brewery's fending off of the big multinational brands; fourthly, by making a name for itself as a contract brewer, renting its facilities to producers of some of the East Coast's most popular craft beer brands (notably, F. X. Matt was one of four U.S. breweries to produce Billy Beer during that notorious brand's 1977-78 lifespan); and last but not least, by acquiring other struggling regional brewers, such as Buffalo's Flying Bison Brewing, which it rescued from the brink of bankruptcy in 2010. Today, aside from Utica Club, F.X. Matt is best known as the producer of Saranac brand beers and soft drinks.