The Ohio Club

The oldest bar in Arkansas, the Ohio Club has a sordid past as an illegal casino and speakeasy. Al Capone, Bugsy Siegel, Lucky Luciano, and Babe Ruth all frequented this establishment.

The Ohio Club at 336 Central Avenue in Hot Springs is the oldest continuously operating bar in Arkansas, founded in 1905 by John "Coffee" Williams and his nephew Sam Watt. The name reflected family roots in Ohio, Illinois, and Kentucky, as clubs bearing those other state names already existed on Central Avenue. The establishment opened as a legal bar and casino across from the famous Bathhouse Row, but after anti-gambling laws passed in 1913, it reinvented itself as the Ohio Cigar Store with concealed gambling operations behind a false wall. After the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, the bar continued operating illicitly upstairs while the main floor maintained a legitimate appearance. Despite raids, the Ohio Club has never closed its doors.

The club's centerpiece is an 1880s hand-carved mahogany backbar from Covington, Kentucky, transported by river barge to Memphis, then by train to Malvern, Arkansas, and finally hauled on a two-day horse-and-buggy journey to Hot Springs, arriving in 1911. The entire front of the building had to be removed and rebuilt just to install the massive bar. The exterior features an A-frame roof with a rounded dome-shaped portico and five triple-pane arched windows. Original gas lamps remain as fixtures.

Hot Springs served as neutral territory for organized crime during Prohibition, and the Ohio Club became a meeting place for the country's most notorious gangsters. Al Capone and Charles "Lucky" Luciano visited to meet local bookies; Luciano reportedly met with Hot Springs chief of detectives Herbert "Dutch" Akers near the club. Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel and Bugs Moran also frequented the establishment, alongside local legends Owen "Owney" Madden and gambling czar William Stokley Jacobs. Beyond gangsters, Al Jolson performed at the club in 1915, Mae West in the 1930s, and Babe Ruth visited during baseball spring training. Blues and jazz musicians continued performing through the 1960s. In 1946, Arkansas prosecuting attorney Sid McMath closed all gambling houses in Hot Springs, but after McMath was elected governor in 1948, his local colleagues were voted out and gaming quietly resumed until the casino finally closed in 1967. The Ohio Club was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and inducted into the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame in 2025.

After hours, when the live music stops and the last patrons leave, the Ohio Club's other regulars make themselves known. Staff and owners have encountered unexplainable phenomena for years. Doors slam shut in rooms where no one is present. Glasses clink together as though invisible patrons are toasting at the mahogany bar. Music plays from empty rooms where no instruments or speakers are operating. Phantom footsteps ascend and descend the stairs that once led to the illegal gambling floor above, as though gangsters are still making their way to the secret tables. Employees report the persistent sensation of being watched, particularly near the antique backbar where the gas lamps still stand.

The ghosts of the Ohio Club are believed to be the spirits of gangsters and gamblers from the establishment's lawless heyday, men who conducted their business in violence and secrecy and perhaps refuse to cash out even in death. The activity is consistent enough that staff have adopted a policy of coexistence: whenever they hear the doors slamming, glasses clinking, or phantom music, whatever or whomever it is, they let it be.

The Ohio Club continues to operate with live music seven nights a week and serves classic cocktails alongside its famous burgers. 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 also offers luxury loft apartment rentals above the bar, where guests sleep in rooms that once hosted illegal card games frequented by some of the most dangerous men in American history.