Savage Craft Ale Works is charting, with photos, the progress of the building of its brewery on Center Street in West Columbia.

The project includes the renovation of the historic New Brookland Jail. According to the Savage Craft Ale Works Facebook page, the one-story brick building with barred windows and its parapeted or “false front” facade was built around 1908. The former jail will serve as the kitchen for Savage Craft Ale Works.

Savage Craft Ale Works is also reporting, via Facebook, that the old jail cells have been removed. In the Old City Hall-Fire House (1925) the fire engine bays and side windows have been reopened and the floors are being redone.

Savage Craft Ale Works also includes a bit of local history: The New Brookland Historic District is the historical nucleus of the City of West Columbia. It emerged in 1894 as a planned residential community for operatives of the Columbia Duck Mill, one of the first hydroelectrically powered textile mills in the nation.