Seagrams

The Seagram Company Ltd. was a large corporation headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada that was the largest distiller of alcoholic beverages in the world. Towards the end of its independent existence it also controlled various entertainment and other business ventures. more...

The Seagram assets have since been acquired by other companies, notably Pepsico, Diageo, and Pernod Ricard.

The famous Seagram Building, the company's American headquarters office tower at 375 Park Avenue in New York City, was designed by architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with Philip Johnson.

History

In 1857, a distillery was founded in Waterloo, Ontario. Joseph E. Seagram became a partner in 1869 and sole owner in 1883, and the company became known as Joseph E. Seagram & Sons. Many decades later, Samuel Bronfman founded Distillers Corporation Limited, in Montreal, which enjoyed substantial growth in the 1920s, in part due to Prohibition in the United States of America.

A few years after the death of Joseph E. Seagram, in 1928 the Distillers Corporation acquired Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, and took over the Seagram name. The company was well prepared for the end of Prohibition in 1933 with an ample stock of aged whiskeys ready to sell to the newly opened American market, and it prospered accordingly. Thus despite its earlier Waterloo history, the Seagram name is most closely associated with the Bronfman family. However, it is not correct to say, as is often done, that Samuel Bronfman founded Seagram, since the Seagram name itself pre-dated the company he founded.

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