The 1926 Vero Beach Diesel Power Plant

The Vero Beach Diesel Power Plant is a 1926 masonry vernacular power station on about two acres west of the Florida East Coast Railway tracks, south of 19th Place in downtown Vero Beach.

The 1999 National Register nomination calls it significant as the first public utilities facility built by the town and the oldest municipal building in the community. It describes a building with a large open floor, brick elevations accented by molded concrete belt courses and a water table, and 12,470 square feet with ceiling heights from 16 to 35 feet. The nomination also gives the alternate name City of Vero Beach Municipal Power Plant.

Official addresses differ. The nomination and the National Park Service NPGallery record give 1246 19th Street, while the City of Vero Beach Local Register page lists the VB Diesel Power Plant at 1133 19th Place. The NPGallery record names Carter and Damerow and Kennard and Sons as architects, community planning and development as the area of significance, and 1926 and 1937 as significant years.

Vero bought a struggling private power plant soon after it incorporated in 1919, moved it beside the railroad, and then replaced it with the 1926 building as the land boom drove demand.

According to the nomination, the private plant had two 25 horsepower engines that ran only on certain days and for short periods. Rapid growth overwhelmed the company, which offered the town the plant for $9,000. When Vero was only a year old, the council bought it and moved the engines and their wooden and sheet metal shed to a new site at the southwest corner of 19th Place, on the west side of the FEC tracks, and added a new 100 horsepower generator.

Demand kept rising. By 1922 a bond issue was needed for more equipment, and the town paid McIntosh and Seymour Company $32,867 for an engine and generator that went into service in March 1923. That July the town hired engineer Harry W. Damerow as superintendent of a new Light and Water Department. In April 1925 a $100,000 bond issue paid for a fireproof plant to cost $37,688 and a new 750 horsepower unit at $58,070. Kennard and Sons designed the site plan and generating side, Carter and Damerow designed the building, and the Erlen Corporation built it.

The diesel plant carried the Vero Beach load from 1926 until a new steam plant on the Indian River took over, after which it served as a backup until its engines were sold in 1994.

When the Vero Beach building opened in 1926, two older 25 horsepower engines and a new 750 horsepower unit moved in, and in 1937 a 750 kilowatt diesel generator was added. A hurricane at 3 a.m. on August 8, 1928, tore off a third of the original wooden roof and stopped operations until 4:45 p.m. on August 9; the repair replaced the wood with the reinforced concrete slab the original design had called for.

The nomination says the population of Vero Beach grew from 800 in 1920 to over 8,700 in 1958, when the city decided the diesel plant had reached capacity and planned a new steam electric plant on the Indian River. The old plant became its backup and several times supplied start-up power after regional blackouts. The diesel units were kept working until 1994, when the city sold them for use in other countries, and the building was vacated in 1995 with only the inoperable 1937 unit left in the main room.

The Vero Beach plant was nominated by Ruth Stanbridge of the Indian River County Historical Society with state preservation staff, and the federal record is dated February 26, 1999.

The nomination lists Ruth Stanbridge of the Indian River Historical Society and Barbara E. Mattick, historic preservationist supervisor, as preparers. At the time the building stood on city-owned property and was vacant except for the non-working 1937 diesel generator. American Icon Brewery credits Ruth Stanbridge and the Indian River County Historical Society with saving the building from being torn down and sold brick by brick.

Local protection followed. The Local Register entry places the plant under Ordinance 2008-08, dated 7/15/08, and the city's National Register page names the Vero Beach Diesel Power Plant among the listed properties in the city, alongside the Vero Theatre, the Pueblo Arcade and the Indian River County Courthouse. The same city page assigns review of nominations to the Historic Preservation Commission.

The City of Vero Beach sold the plant through a request for proposals issued on December 18, 2015, and an evaluation committee unanimously ranked the Integra proposal first.

A February 16, 2016 purchasing memo to the city manager records that sealed proposals were opened on January 21, 2016, from Ross Powers Inc., Integra and Treasure Coast Distillery, after a January 4 site visit at the Vero Beach plant. The four-member committee interviewed all three on February 15, 2016, scored development plan, qualifications and price, and asked that a contract with Integra go on the March 1, 2016 council agenda. Integra received 100, 99, 75 and 100 points from the four members.

The City Clerk keeps the submissions on its Historical Diesel Power Plant RFPs page, including the American Icon Brewery business plan, the Integra proposal for American Icon Brewery, the Ross Powers proposal and presentation, and the Treasure Coast Distilling proposal. Before the sale, American Icon Brewery says, local developers David Croom and Phil Barth leased the building from the city in 2001, cleared it, repaired brick and replaced the windows and roof, but it then sat with no end user for about 15 years.

The Vero Beach diesel plant is now American Icon Brewery, a brewpub and production brewery that opened in October 2017 around the surviving 1937 generator.

American Icon Brewery states that the plant was sold in June 2016 to real estate developer Michael R. Rechter and that, after a $6 million renovation, the building and property reopened as a brewpub and production brewery in October 2017. The brewery identifies the retained 1937 unit as a 750 kilowatt Busch-Sulzer air injected diesel generator and calls it the centerpiece of the room.

The brewery also maps the old plant onto the new uses: the northwest room that held the public entrance, office and reception area is now its retail store, and the long brick wing on the east side that housed engine and generator controls now holds the restrooms and kitchen. It notes that the plant was built beside the FEC tracks so equipment and diesel fuel could arrive by rail. Last verified: October 15, 2026, by re-reading the 1999 National Register nomination and NPGallery record, the City of Vero Beach Local Register, National Register and City Clerk RFP pages, the 2016 purchasing memo and the American Icon Brewery history page.