Our never-ending search for new bars downtown took us to an unlikely little haunt behind the old Wayne County Building last week. Unlikely, because there's nothing new about Jacoby's.Billed as the oldest bar in Detroit, Jacoby's German Biergarten has been serving since 1904 – that's 106 years, we learn with a little math assistance from UMJenn.
Sitting in the tiny, one-room, first-floor tavern, it feels like you're hanging out in somebody's beautifully refinished game room. Finished in dark-stained wood that occasionally breaks to expose the aging brick walls behind, Jacoby's features a handful of tables and hightops, a few flat screens hanging at the ceiling, and a long bar where you can choose from any number of German bottled beers. No worries, they've got domestics, too.
It's a great place for lunch, popular with the Wayne County workers who, until recently, occupied the old building across Brush Street. (Wayne County recently moved its offices to the Guardian Building, as reported here in substantially shallow detail.) How that dip in traffic impacts Jacoby's remains to be seen. But they've been around for 106 years. Something tells me they'll make it.
