Jacob Wirth, the storied German beer hall that has sat dark for eight years, could reopen as soon as next year, its owners say, in what could be a rare revival for one of Boston’s historic restaurants.
After two destructive fires, millions of dollars in damage, and years of uncertainty, the owners of the Stuart Street landmark say they are finally ready to rebuild. They plan to begin construction later this year on a $5.5 million restoration project that could revive the distinctive beer hall that had anchored Boston’s Theater District for more than a century, while also adding five apartments on the building’s upper floors.
If all goes according to plan, construction will take at least a year, with Jacob Wirth reopening as soon as late 2027, though it could slip into early 2028, said Jacob Simmons, a vice president for Allston-based City Real Estate Development, one of the owners. The project depends in part on state and federal historic tax credits, which could offset roughly 30 percent of eligible construction costs.
It’s a comeback that nearly happened once before.
In June 2024, Jamison LaGuardia was two weeks away from getting the keys to Jacob Wirth. He and his partners had spent years preparing to revive it.
Then the building erupted into flames.
They had been so close to reopening. Menus had been finalized, a new general manager and chef hired. Kitchen equipment was expected to be delivered any day. Then it became victim of a devastating fire — the second to strike the property in six years. The owners, Simmons said, “don’t have a definite answer” on how the fire started. (Jacob Wirth originally closed in 2018 after an earlier fire broke out in an upstairs apartment.)
“It was a gut punch,” said LaGuardia, vice president of sales and operations at Royale Entertainment Group and one of Jacob Wirth’s owners. ”But here we are two years later, and prepping to do it all over again."
Jacob Wirth represented a version of Boston, a city known historically for having plenty of wood-paneled taverns and Irish pubs, that has been steadily disappearing.
“Everyone always complains every time a new place comes in. Everyone always asks, ‘Why don’t they just reopen Durgin-Park?’ Or, ‘Why don’t they just reopen this or that?’” Simmons said. “We’re kind of doing what everyone keeps saying they want someone to do” by reopening a historic institution.
But will “everyone” show up?
As institutions such as downtown French-Italian haunt Marliave, the iconic Yankee fare restaurant Durgin-Park at Faneuil Hall, and S&S Deli in Cambridge have closed, the city’s dining scene has shifted toward sleek concepts built for social media and younger crowds. At the same time, family-friendly restaurants and affordable eateries have become increasingly rare.
“Everyone is trying to be the newest, coolest, hippest place, and Jacob Wirth is the antithesis of that,” said LaGuardia, whose group runs nightclubs including Legacy, Royale, and LGBTQ+ club Crown (formerly known as Candibar), among others. “Anyone can open up a bar or restaurant or nightclub, bring in DJs, and make it cool and modern and hip. We’re not going for that.”
If Jacob Wirth was transformed into an opulent steakhouse or a contemporary Mediterranean small-plates restaurant, “people would kick and scream and come with pitchforks,” said LaGuardia, who called the redevelopment of Jacob Wirth the biggest and most complex of his career.
They’ll preserve the German beer hall identity while updating the menu with lighter options, alongside longtime and affordable favorites. The owners have not yet hired a chef, so the final menu remains in development. They might bring back piano nights, LaGuardia said.
The restaurant was founded in 1868 during a period when Boston had a substantial German immigrant population. Jacob Wirth, the eponymous founder, came to Boston in the 1830s from a wine-growing area of Germany. He later became one of the largest wine importers in the country, mostly working with family vineyards in Germany, the Globe wrote in his obituary in 1892. His son, Jacob Wirth Jr., who was born just above the restaurant in 1880, dropped out of Harvard to run it about a decade after his father died. He was credited with turning the restaurant into a national, and even global, phenomenon, according to his Globe obituary in 1965.
The restaurant had hardly changed over the years, and it was known for hearty German food, beer, and 19th-century decor of mustard-colored walls, gaslight fixtures, rugged round tables, and chairs with cane seats. (Photographs from the 1950s show waiters in black coats with bow ties and white aprons.)
William J. Fitzgerald, a former Boston fire commissioner, bought the restaurant in 1975 and had plans to tear it down to expand the adjacent parking lot he owned. But the city had other plans, and the Boston Landmark Commission designated the building and restaurant a historical landmark for ethnic and architectural reasons.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Jacob Wirth suffered from declining sales and neighborhood problems, including skyrocketing crime, prostitution, and other illegal activity in the nearby Combat Zone. In 2018, its owner faced a slew of financial problems and owed $1.43 million to creditors and nearly $70,000 in back pay to more than two dozen employees. The restaurant filed for bankruptcy, and the property was put on the market in early 2018. Six months later, it had its first fire, which led to its permanent closure.
In its long history, just six people have operated the restaurant as chief proprietors.
Today, the inside of Jacob Wirth bears the scars of fire. Parts of the ceiling have collapsed. The original wooden backbar is charred black. Soot blankets a piano, the bar top, and the floor. Even the Latin inscription carved into the wood, “Suum cuique,” a Latin phrase for “to each his own,” is hardly legible. They’ll have to completely rebuild the bar, Simmons said.
This project “is a different monster,” LaGuardia said. “But we’re doing it.”
Alexa Gagosz can be reached at alexa.gagosz@globe.com. Follow her @alexagagosz and on Instagram @AlexaGagosz.