The Iroquois Brewery was successor to the Jacob Roos Brewery, originally founded in 1842. The brewery was located between Hickory and Pratt Streets. Iroquois survived prohibition by brewing soda and near beer and reopened shortly after prohibition ended in April 1933. Iroquois grew and prospered after prohibition and became the largest brewer in Buffalo, attaining a capacity of 600,000 barrels per year. For a time, Iroquois operated multiple breweries in the greater Buffalo area. In the 1950s, Iroquois merged with a group of other regional brewers and formed the International Brewing Company. Iroquois' partners in this venture included Silver Bar (Tampa, FL), Frankenmuth (Frankenmuth, MI), and Old Dutch (Findlay, OH). Despite this attempt to build the merged companies into a large national network, the brands remained regional in nature. Iroquois was taken independent again in 1965. At the time of its closing in 1971, Iroquois had outlived all other Buffalo breweries except for William Simon, which closed a couple of years later.
