Beauty is more interesting with company.
A cocktail bar at 12th & Walnut, Over-the-Rhine. Opening date to be announced.
Figures dissolve
into the clouds.
A ceiling fresco by Alex Frank.
Alex Frank spent nearly a year painting the fresco in place. Clouds cover the ceiling, with figures dissolving into them above the bar.
Classics, and a few
of our own.
Drinks
Alongside
Spain, Italy and Germany are among the places we look to for inspiration. The opening menu will include familiar classics and house cocktails, with infusions among the techniques used behind the bar. The full menu is still taking shape.
Small things,
eaten standing up.
Hors d’œuvres
Food for one hand, so the other can stay on your glass. A small selection of plates to share around a communal table.
The opening selection draws on Spain, Italy and Germany. There will be more to share when the delicatessen opens next door.
Born from a love
of one building.
Then shaped by many hands.
Behind the drywall from decades of renovations were tall windows and sixteen-foot ceilings. Removing the later additions brought daylight back into the room.
We designed and built the interior around them, from the crown molding to the parquet floor. The work took about four years, with a pause of nearly two years along the way.
People spent a great deal of time making this place. You’re welcome to take yours.
The back bar.
The granite intended for the back bar broke during delivery. We kept the stone and worked with the pieces.
A love letter to a building,
written slowly.
- Crown molding drawn to suit the height of the ceilings.
- Layers of broken sculpture, partly exposed in cast concrete.
- Custom parquet with a night sky mapped in brass.
- Tall windows, hung low enough to look out of from your seat.
Germania.
Above the front door stands Germania, the figure who gave the building her name in 1877. She holds a globe, books and a painter’s palette.
The Muse takes her name from Germania and from the inspiration we found while working on the building.
After a while, we realized we had fallen in love with the building. We wanted to make a place where that pleasure could be shared.
To us, the point of making something beautiful is for people to enjoy it.
1877
The sky over 12th & Walnut.
Brass inlaid in the parquet records the sky over this corner at midnight on 1 January 1877, the year the building was completed. Her exact opening date is unknown; we chose the first night of the year.
Staying at
The Muse.
Twenty-eight hotel rooms are planned on the floors above the bar. The rooms will open after the bar and delicatessen.
Opening details, rates and reservations will follow.
Above
Walnut Street.
Germania, since 1877.
Johann Bast designed the Renaissance Revival facade; Schreiber and Sons made the cast-iron storefront and cornice. Above the door, Germania has remained through changes to her name, her appearance and the life of the building.
The Germania
Building.
Built in 1877 for the German Mutual Fire Insurance Company, the Germania carries the work of its architect and ironworkers, and traces of the city’s German history.
The company begins
Henry Ratterman founded the German Mutual Fire Insurance Company after repeated fires left German neighbors with unpaid claims from insurers that had gone bankrupt. He had arrived from Ankum, Germany, at fourteen and worked in a lumber yard.
A home at 12th & Walnut
The company built the Germania, designed by Johann Bast. Schreiber and Sons Iron Works made the cast-iron storefront and cornice. Germania took her place above Walnut Street; a carving of Apollo driving four horses sits over the 12th Street entrance.
A name concealed
When America entered the First World War, the German name in the cornice was boarded over and Germania was covered with a black sheet. Within a few years, the statue had been reworked as Columbia, with an eagle on her breastplate, flags on her shield and E Pluribus Unum carved into her gown.
A familiar emblem
By 1957, the company was known as Hamilton Mutual. Apollo and his horses still appeared in its newspaper advertising.
The next life
We acquired the building in 2020. The bar will open first, followed by a delicatessen and, later, twenty-eight hotel rooms.
Building history drawn from Germania Building: History, Common Bond Consulting LLC, 2020. Illustration after the 1877 facade.
An ordinary evening is a
fine reason to dress up.
At the corner of 12th & Walnut, Over-the-Rhine. Open in Google Maps
A cocktail bar in the old Germania Building.
1127 Walnut Street · Cincinnati, Ohio 45202