After over a half-decade of development, the team behind Over-the-Rhine bar Somerset is finally ready to show off their next muse.
The Muse, a new bar and hotel inside the historic Germania Building at 1127 Walnut Street in Over-the-Rhine, is leaning into the building’s European and neoclassical heritage with an exhaustive amount of detail: custom-made French parquet flooring, a hand-painted ceiling fresco that took nearly a year to complete, a brass sculpture of the star constellation that was above the building when it originally opened in 1877, and plenty more details that’ll ensure it’s the swankiest bar in the neighborhood.
“Details like that is why it’s taken us so long to get this up and running, because it’s all so crafty and handmade,” said James Fisher, the bar’s founder. “It’s been a total labor of love … Our goal with Somerset was to make people feel like they were somewhere else, and to bring a little bit of the outside world into the city. That’s our goal here, too.”
The attention to detail is the most important aspect of the space to the team— so important, in fact, that they’ve stopped construction multiple times to “regroup, retool and give it the focus it needs to do it right” since purchasing the building in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If we wanted to open a bar just for the sake of opening a bar, we could open it, like, tomorrow. But we want to do this properly,” he said. “It is a bit absurd, and I hope it pays off, but for me, I love the craft and the process of building something special. I look at this as an art project, and that’s what excites me the most.”
When The Muse opens at the end of the summer, its 28 hotel rooms won’t be ready just yet, nor will its planned kitchen space. But what it will have is a small selection of hors d’oeuvres and a killer selection of themed cocktails to match the building’s history.
“What you’ll see inside the building is a juxtaposition of European neoclassical elements with bits of space age modernism in the furnishings. It’s a unique creative tension, and we wanted the menu to reflect that … we’ll be focused on doing simple classic cocktails really, really well, but we’ll also have several boundary pushing cocktails for people who like to get experimental,” Fisher said.
Fisher said he feels that the city is lacking an upscale cocktail joint on this level, and that Muse is shooting to be “ambitious, while still affordable, and classy, but not pretentious.” As mentioned, the bar leans heavily into the building’s heritage. When the Germania Building opened two centuries ago, it was built for the German Mutual Insurance Company. Well-known for its limestone exterior and prominent second-story sculpture of Germania, its grandeur stands out, even in a neighborhood full of awe-inspiring historical structures.
“With every building, we look at what’s interesting about where the building came from and try to honor what came before us. And, initially, it was hard because I was like ‘holy shit, how do we make insurance interesting?’ But then we got to thinking about what you’d be insuring against, and the idea that you have to wipe away what was there to be able to do something new,” he said. “And who else facilitates the cycle of rebirth more than a mother, right? And Germania is the mother of Germany, and the muse is a kind of abstraction of a divine feminine mother.”
Now that the long-gestating project is finally nearing its end, Fisher is excited for the public getting to see the final result.
“People should feel the quality … It’s not a lot of places that will make a commitment to be like, okay, I’m going to spend a year painting this fresco on the ceiling on my back like Michelangelo,” he said. “I’m looking forward to having a place that’s quiet, refined and polished. We still want to be inclusive in all forms and all ways … But if you want a spot to go for a nice night out, this is it.”
