A cocktail bar in the old Germania Building.
At 12th & Walnut, in Cincinnati’s historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood.
Open soon — close enough to start counting.
Figures climb through
a break in the clouds.
A ceiling fresco by Alex Frank.
The fresco was painted by hand, directly onto the ceiling, and took the better part of a year. Take your time — that’s rather the point.
Germania.
Above the front door stands Germania, the allegorical mother of Germany, holding a globe, books and a painter’s palette. She has occupied that niche since the building went up in 1877.
In 1917, the country she represented became the enemy. The company boarded over its German name and draped her in black. Within a few years she had been quietly recast as Columbia — an eagle on her breastplate, flags on her shield, E Pluribus Unum cut into her gown. They changed everything about her but her face.
After a while, we realized we had fallen in love with the building. Worse, it kept giving us ideas. The name followed.
The bar is called The Muse, and the building is still the Germania Building.
Then the work began in earnest: four years of it, the bar, the molding and the floor all drawn and built for these exact walls. Nothing was ordered from a catalogue.
Some came from here.
The rest was made for it.
- Granite behind the bar, cracked through the middle when the slab fell.
- Broken sculpture set into concrete, with fragments surfacing through the wall.
- Crown molding and wood trim drawn for sixteen-foot ceilings.
- The sky over this corner in 1877, mapped in brass across the parquet.
- Granite behind the bar, cracked through the middle when the slab fell.
- Broken sculpture set into concrete, with fragments surfacing through the wall.
- Crown molding and wood trim drawn for sixteen-foot ceilings.
- The sky over this corner in 1877, mapped in brass across the parquet.
1877
The sky over 12th & Walnut.
Brass set into the parquet maps the sky exactly as it hung over this corner in 1877, each star plotted where it stood — in case you ever wondered what the night was up to the year the building was born.
Brass set into the parquet maps the sky exactly as it hung over this corner in 1877, each star plotted where it stood — in case you ever wondered what the night was up to the year the building was born.
- 1877 The Germania rises
- 1877–1917 Kept in German
- 1917 The name comes down
- 2020→ Work begins inside
Classics,
made properly.
Modern technique has a place, but the result still has to earn it in the glass. Italy and Germany keep turning up uninvited, and we keep pouring for them.
Menu to follow soon.
Small things,
eaten standing up.
Or sitting down.
Nothing here needs a knife. Nor much explaining. Our fare is for one hand so the other never has to leave your glass; little plates made for the gap between this drink and the next.
The plates are pan-European, and everything is cut to order.
The delicatessen opens a few months behind the bar.
Word gets
around.
Here’s what’s been written about The Muse.
In the press
From us
-
Press release The Muse announces its first phase at 12th & Walnut
Come in.
The door’s on E. 12th Street. Open in Google Maps
A cocktail bar in the old Germania Building.
1127 Walnut Street · Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
Bar first · delicatessen next · twenty-eight rooms to stay