30 years of Barcelona
More than a century of stories
“The physical transformation from beer and brats saloon to sultry Mediterranean restaurant is impressive.”
-Terry Libby
The Other Paper
Tucked into the heart of historic German Village, Barcelona Restaurant occupies a corner with a history stretching back more than 130 years. Long before Spanish and Mediterranean-inspired dishes were served here, these buildings housed a neighborhood saloon, recreation hall, pharmacy, grocery store and the beloved Deibel’s. Politicians gathered for lunch, neighbors bowled for the price of a beer, silent movies played to live piano accompaniment and Columbus residents came together to eat, drink and celebrate.
As Barcelona marks its 30th anniversary in 2026, the occasion offers a chance to celebrate both sides of its story: the extraordinary history it inherited and the generations of restaurant people who have spent the past three decades creating a history of their own.
More Than a Century on East Whittier
Barcelona occupies two historic buildings, 259 and 263 East Whittier Street. The older of the two, the turreted corner building at 259, was built in 1895 by the Brunswick Company. Brunswick also crafted the magnificent oak bar, completed in 1907, that remains a centerpiece of the restaurant today.
After the building’s construction, the Hoster Brewing Company purchased it as a brewery pub and selected Bill Deibel as its tavern keeper. Hoster Brewing had been part of Columbus since 1836, operating on Front Street in what is now the Brewery District.
Running a tavern apparently ran in the Deibel family. Bill’s relative John Deibel had opened Deibel’s, a café and pool room at 279 South High Street, in 1890.
Bill Deibel’s East Whittier location was particularly well positioned for the era. It sat at the end of the streetcar line, with a baseball park across the street alongside a bakery and doctor’s office. The athletic field nearby had even hosted The Ohio State University’s first home football game in 1890 against the College of Wooster.
Traces of those early years remain visible today. Weathered lettering on the eastern brick wall of 259 East Whittier still bears remnants of advertisements for Deibel’s and its pool tables.
Between 1904 and 1908, the adjoining building at 263 East Whittier was constructed as a recreation center and sports bar. Pool tables and a one-chair barbershop occupied the front, while two bowling lanes sat toward the rear. According to local lore, those lanes may still be intact just beneath Barcelona’s current dining room floor. Despite multiple renovations, the floorboards have never been removed far enough to settle the story one way or another. In Deibel’s day, purchasing a beer earned a customer a token good for one game.
Prohibition and the Hogs Head Club
Deibel’s flourished as a neighborhood gathering place until Prohibition dramatically changed both the business and the buildings around it.
According to stories passed down over the years, the bar at 259 East Whittier was purchased by Gerke, a baker from across the street who objected to the legal sale of alcohol. His daughter, Lorena Caldwell, later inherited the building and converted it into a pharmacy. During Prohibition, the recreation center at 263 East Whittier was leased and became a Piggly Wiggly grocery store.
When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Deibel reclaimed the recreation center and transformed it back into a social hall. By then, Bill had developed close relationships with local politicians and City Hall. His Hogs Head Club, a lunchtime gathering featuring pigs’ feet, pigs’ knuckles, sauerkraut and beer, became a popular destination for Columbus politicians throughout the 1930s.
St. Patrick’s Day held particular significance at Deibel’s because March 17 was both Bill’s birthday and his favorite holiday. Crowds packed the establishment for celebrations that stretched late into the night, with Bill greeting each female guest with a green carnation.
Bill continued operating Deibel’s until his death in the early 1940s. His son Dick, a firefighter, managed it for a time before selling the business to Blackie Blackburn. Stories from Blackburn’s years describe a decidedly rougher establishment, with plaster walls yellowed by cigarette smoke and facilities that would be considered primitive by today’s standards.
From Silent Movies to the Biergarten
Phil Henry and Bob Lumpe purchased Deibel’s in 1959 and introduced traditions that would become part of the restaurant’s lore. Silent films featuring Charlie Chaplin and the Keystone Kops played in the rear while pianist Maury Bowsher accompanied them live.
The pair also established the original biergarten behind 259 East Whittier, renting the space from Lorena Caldwell, who still owned the pharmacy. Its beginnings were decidedly modest. Gravel covered the ground, four young trees offered little shade and guests rested their drinks on aging picnic tables with peeling paint. Rustic as it was, the biergarten quickly became a popular neighborhood gathering place.
Tom Silcott took ownership in 1969 and continued improving the property. He added the door connecting the restaurant directly to the biergarten, eliminating the need for guests to walk around the building to reach it and spent his spare time stripping away yellowed plaster to reveal the brickwork still visible today.
Silcott continued the silent-film tradition but also brought in an entertainer who would become one of the most memorable figures in Deibel’s history. Accordion player Ester Craw was initially hired for a single weekend, but her popularity with guests quickly made her a fixture. Ester was a part of the USO with Bob Hope. Over time, live music replaced the silent films, with musicians including an elderly, stone-faced banjo player named Adolph and Max, a tall man with a patch over one eye who entertained patrons with a penny saw or whistle.
One of the property’s most significant transformations came in 1981, when Silcott purchased 259 East Whittier and undertook a six-month renovation that physically joined the two buildings. The project created the combined restaurant space guests recognize today and was completed in time for Deibel’s traditional St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
After several subsequent ownership changes, Patricia Snodgrass purchased Deibel’s in 1988 and brought Ester Craw back to entertain another generation of guests. Bill Bigalow operated the restaurant from 1993 until 1996, when the long Deibel’s era finally came to a close.
Barcelona Begins
In 1996, the corner began another chapter. After more than six decades of Deibel’s, Barcelona Restaurant opened under owner Kyle Katz, bringing a new culinary identity to a space that had already spent a century reinventing itself.
The transformation was significant. Long communal tables, booths and stained glass gave way to custom furniture, new lighting and ironwork by the Fortin Company. A bank of windows overlooking the garden brought natural light into the dining room, while large mirrors opened up the rear of the space.
But Barcelona’s arrival did not require erasing what had come before it.
The oak bar remained. So did the exposed brick, original tin ceiling, well-worn wooden floors and unmistakable character accumulated over the building’s first century. The restaurant was new, but the history around it was allowed to show.
When Scott Heimlich purchased Barcelona in 2002, preserving that character remained a priority. Renovations over the years continued with an eye toward treating the historic setting as an integral part of the restaurant rather than simply its backdrop, allowing Barcelona to evolve without sanding away the quirks and imperfections that tell the building’s story.
Over the decades that followed, Barcelona built an identity distinctly its own. Its garden became one of the city’s best-known patios, its wine program received recognition from Wine Spectator and the restaurant earned recognition among Columbus dining destinations. Its walls also became home to works by local artists, adding another layer to a space shaped and reshaped by the community around it.
The People Behind Barcelona
A 30th anniversary, however, belongs to more than a building.
Restaurants are, above all, human places. A historic bar can survive for a century, but it cannot greet a guest. A beautiful garden cannot cook dinner, remember a regular’s favorite table, train a new server, accommodate a last-minute celebration or hold a busy Saturday night together when every seat is full.
Barcelona’s longevity has depended on the people willing to do those things, year after year.
For 30 years, owners, managers, chefs, cooks, bartenders, servers, hosts, dishwashers, support staff and countless others have each carried some part of Barcelona’s story. Teams have changed, as restaurant teams inevitably do, but each has left something behind for the next.
Today, that responsibility belongs to the people carrying Barcelona into its fourth decade. From its leadership team to the employees working each service, they share the challenge of preserving what longtime guests already love while continuing to make Barcelona relevant to the Columbus dining community of today.
That work lives in a kitchen where cooks and chefs bring each service to life, behind a bar that has been pouring drinks for generations and throughout a front-of-house team responsible for making a large and often bustling restaurant feel personal. Together, they create an experience no historic building could create on its own.
Those employees also become part of Barcelona’s history through the relationships they build with guests. They remember returning customers, celebrate milestones alongside families and become familiar faces to people who have made the restaurant part of their own traditions. In an industry known for constant change, the relationships between a restaurant, its staff and its regulars are an important part of what allows a place to endure.
Thirty Years Around the Table
Over Barcelona’s 30 years, thousands of individual stories have unfolded inside these buildings and throughout the garden.
There have been first dates that eventually became anniversaries, proposals followed by weddings, birthday dinners, family reunions, celebrations of life and ordinary evenings among friends that became memorable simply because of the people around the table. Some guests who first discovered Barcelona decades ago now return with another generation of their families.
Employees have watched children grow up. Couples have returned year after year. Regulars have developed favorite tables, favorite dishes and familiar faces they hope to see when they walk through the door.
Those experiences connect Barcelona today with a tradition much older than the restaurant itself. For more than a century, regardless of the name over the door, this corner of East Whittier has existed largely for the same reason: people wanted somewhere to gather.
For the past 30 years, Barcelona has added its own story to that legacy.
The restaurant has changed along the way because successful restaurants must. Menus evolve, teams change and a city develops around them. Yet Barcelona has remained rooted in the character of its historic home and in the tradition of hospitality that has defined this corner of East Whittier for generations.
As Barcelona enters its fourth decade, preserving that legacy means more than maintaining old brick, an oak bar or an uneven floor. It means continuing the hospitality that gave those things meaning in the first place. The people working at Barcelona today are not simply operating inside a historic restaurant. With every service, celebration and guest they welcome, they are writing its next chapter.
More than 130 years after the building at 259 East Whittier first rose on this corner, and 30 years after Barcelona took its place here, the restaurant remains filled with many of the same things this corner has long been known for: conversation, food, drinks, celebrations, friendships and people taking care of one another.
The names over the door have changed. So have the menus, music and faces behind the bar. But people have continued coming here to gather.
The building holds the history. The people and the food inside it keep that history alive.
History compiled by Scott Heimlich with contributions from Tom Silcott, Paul Yow, Christina Brown-Ellis, and Doug Motz. Edited by Annie Winchester.
August 2026
Thank you to everyone that has helped over the years to compile this history and artifacts from Deibel’s. If you have additional information or items you wish to share, please reach out to us as we continue to expand on the history of Deibel’s and Barcelona.
