The Ohio Club

Capone, Luciano, and Bugsy Siegel all drank at the oldest continuously operating bar in Arkansas, which survived Prohibition by hiding gambling behind a false wall and never once closed its doors. Staff hear glasses clinking, phantom music, and footsteps climbing to the old illegal gambling floor after hours, and they've stopped investigating.

The mahogany backbar traveled by river barge to Memphis, by train to Malvern, Arkansas, and then by horse-drawn wagon on a two-day overland journey to Hot Springs. When it arrived in 1911, the entire front of the building at 336 Central Avenue had to be ripped out and rebuilt just to fit it inside. Hand-carved from a single piece of wood in Covington, Kentucky, in the 1880s, the bar features horse heads and female figures. It still stands in the same spot, and so do some of the people who used to drink at it.

John "Coffee" Williams and his nephew Sam Watt opened the Ohio Club in 1905, naming it after their family's home state since the Illinois Club and Kentucky Club had already claimed theirs on Central Avenue. The location across from Bathhouse Row was prime real estate in a resort town that drew the rich and the criminal in roughly equal measure. The club operated legally as a bar and casino until Arkansas banned gambling in 1913. After that, the front became the Ohio Cigar Store. The bar moved behind a false wall. Gaming tables went upstairs. Two separate phone numbers in advertisements hinted at the arrangement. When the Eighteenth Amendment killed alcohol nationwide in 1919, the booze just moved upstairs too.

Hot Springs was neutral territory for organized crime. Al Capone came through to meet local bookies. Lucky Luciano met with Hot Springs chief of detectives Herbert "Dutch" Akers near the club. Bugsy Siegel and Owney Madden drank here. Local gambling czar William Stokley Jacobs made the Ohio Club his office and partnered with Williams and Watt in the 1920s. Al Jolson performed in 1915. Babe Ruth stopped by during spring training.

Prosecuting attorney Sid McMath shut down every gambling house in Hot Springs in 1946. When McMath was elected governor in 1948, his local allies got voted out and the tables quietly reopened. The casino finally closed for good in 1967. Through all of it, the bar never stopped pouring. The Ohio Club has never once closed its doors.

After hours, the staff leave whatever is happening alone. Doors slam in rooms where nobody is standing. Glasses clink together at the mahogany bar as though someone is raising a toast. Music drifts from empty rooms with no instruments or speakers. Footsteps climb the stairs to the old gambling floor, the same staircase gangsters used to reach the illegal card tables above. The staff investigated a few times early on and stopped bothering. Whoever is still drinking at the Ohio Club after closing has been coming here longer than anyone on the payroll.

The exterior keeps its original A-frame roof and rounded dome-shaped portico. Five triple-pane arched windows with circular decorative panels line the front. A life-sized Al Capone statue sits on a bench outside. The club was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 as part of the Hot Springs Central Avenue Historic District and was inducted into the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame in 2025.

Mike and Dona Pettey purchased the business in 2010 and the building in 2016. Saddiq and Jeannie Mir became the most recent owners in 2023. The club still runs live music and serves classic cocktails alongside its famous burgers. A luxury loft apartment above the bar opened in October 2020 for overnight guests who want to sleep above the room where Capone played cards. The Ohio Club has been open since 1905 and doesn't appear to have a last call.