Newsroom | West Chester Township, OH

A landmark presumed lost to time. A mystery 150 years in the making. A lion hunt for the ages.

One iconic piece of the Cincinnati region’s rich history and heritage is finding a new home at Beckett Park in West Chester Township thanks to the contribution of Dan Doran and his family.

Dan and his wife Anne Doran of Ross Township contacted West Chester, Ohio elected officials unexpectedly in the summer of 2023 with an intriguing offer. Would your community want a 10,000-pound stone lion?

The Dorans were moving out of state and couldn’t take their prized pet with them, so they decided to rehome the lion to the park on Beckett Road, where part of its family’s lineage can be traced through the Muhlhauser Barn by way of the Miami Erie Canal.

This safari starts all the way back to the beginning of America’s Gilded Age in the latter half of the 19th century. For context, this is about the same time when Cincinnati earned its nickname, the Queen City of the West.

In 1866-67, Conrad Windisch, 41, and Gottlieb Muhlhauser, 30, joined forces to create the Windisch-Muhlhauser Brewing Company. Conrad and Gottlieb were brothers-in-law and German immigrants from parts of Bavaria. Both of the company’s founders grew up on farms. Conrad had extensive knowledge of the beer business, working with beer giants like Christian Moerlein, while Gottlieb’s résumé included front office experience bottling mineral water and milling grain for flour. Gottlieb’s younger brother Heinrich, 24, was also a partner in the brewery.

The Windisch-Muhlhauser Brewing Company was built along the canal in Over-the-Rhine. The Central Parkway property is today adjacent to TQL Stadium, home of FC Cincinnati and Major League Soccer.

Before Prohibition, many of Cincinnati’s prosperous beer barons, the Windisches and Muhhausers included, owned large summer homes on Butler County, Ohio farms, where they would grow, harvest and store crops like barley, wheat and hops – ingredients needed to make beer. The Miami Erie Canal cut through this southwest corner of West Chester Township (then Union Township), and would have been a way for farmers and brewers living and working in the area to transport goods to major cities north and south.

In operation for about 55 years, the Windisch-Muhlhauser Brewing Company became one of the most successful breweries in America, if not the world. It’s said to have been one of the top three breweries in Cincinnati at the turn of the century, when our city was home base for dozens of thriving brew masters.

The prolific brew house in Over-the-Rhine was built in the Romanesque Revival style, known in Germany as “Rundbogenstil,” and is said to have matched its owners’ high regard for their million-dollar company and Bavarian roots. Perched high above the rooftops of this large five-story brick building lounged two giant lion statues, each weighing about the same as a real-life African forest elephant. The lions, measuring approximately 10-feet long by 3-feet wide by 6-feet tall, are depicted in old photographs, sketches and illustrations guarding the east façade of the main building, looking out over the canal.

“As I understand it, the lions were brought to Cincinnati from Germany to be signature pieces on the brewery on Central Parkway,” Dan Doran said. By the late 1800s and early 1900s, it’s estimated a steam powered transatlantic cargo ship, loaded up with tonnage numbering in the thousands, could’ve made this voyage in about one or two weeks’ time.

The stately stone lions quickly became synonymous with the Windisch-Muhlhauser Brewing Company and the nickname Lion Brewery stuck. Trademarked images of lions made appearances in keen marketing campaigns, and sales of suds with names like “Lion Brew” and “Lion Export,” packaged in kegs and bottles, resulted in the production of hundreds of barrels of beer per day. One prescient ad reads, “The Lion is the King of Beasts, and the Lion Brewery manufactures the King of Beers.”

As the company grew and its OTR footprint expanded, the stone lions loomed large as a symbol of success – even long after the lager dried up. The Lion Brewery operated into the Prohibition Era, which ultimately killed the alcohol industry in the USA by the start of 1920. The company did what it could to stay afloat, making non-alcoholic products until about 1922 with much the same materials and equipment that would have otherwise gone into beer production.

After Prohibition in 1933, the Burger Brewing Company began making beer right where the Lion Brewery left off, leasing the plant for about a decade before purchasing the property. Burger operated and grew their business on the same OTR street corner from about 1934 to 1973.

“At some point there was concern that the lions posed a safety risk being so high in the air, so they were taken down,” Dan said. “Our family business was involved in the removal project, and my uncle wound up with the lions.”

Doran Transfer & Rigging LLC of Cincinnati was established in 1913. Thanks to Dan and his industrious ancestors, the Doran family was able to preserve the prized lions and plot their safe migration north to greener pastures, where this pride of two would come to stand by the roadside – their incredible backstory essentially hiding in plain sight – to the delight of future generations.

Maybe you recognize them?

Cincinnatians who grew up or lived in suburbs on the Westside have likely spotted these Windisch-Muhlhauser lions before. Together, spaced apart by about 20 feet in and around the 4800 block of North Bend Road, just half a mile south of where the Mercy Health West Hospital campus is today, the pair came to be viewed as a Green Township attraction up through the second half of the 20th century.

Dale Rack, co-owner of V & G Rack Co., is now in possession of the other of the two lions. The Doran and Rack families go way back in the Monfort Heights community where they once lived and worked as neighbors. Dale fondly remembers his 1950s and 1960s childhood days spent playing outside with siblings and friends, running around the front yards where both lions had at one time landed, not long after their careers overlooking the downtown brewery. He believes the twin lions were separated in the late 1980s.

At present, the Rack lion is anchored on the other side of the street in the 5000 block of North Bend Road, in front of the family business in Hamilton County. With a fresh coat of paint – yellow for the fur and brown for the mane – it’s hard to miss the striking beast resting several feet in the air on top of a custom-built stone block pedestal that Dale helped create. The lion, which Dale’s late father Vincent once lovingly nicknamed “Kitty Cat,” has stayed with their family for decades despite moving around to different Westside business properties they’ve owned over the years. No matter where it’s been, he says, lots of people are interested to stop and see the curiosity up close.

Dan Doran and Dale Rack each love and honor their Windisch-Muhlhauser lions. They know and cherish their unique timelines, and deeply respect what the relics represent for the city of Cincinnati and its history. Neither one, however, seemed quite sure exactly of the lions’ given names – a special detail that might’ve been lost to time if not for Jeff Suess, a historian on staff of the Cincinnati Enquirer.

“The Lion Brewery’s concrete lions, Leo and Leona, were spared the building’s fate when it was discovered in 1952 that they were just sitting on concrete slabs, not attached to the building. Instead of being secured, the lions were removed,” he writes on page 60 of his book, ‘Lost Cincinnati,’ in which the author digs into all types of quirky Queen City lore.

Jeff Suess’s discovery implies that Dale’s lion, who continues to live in front of the Rack family business in Green Township, is named Leona; and Dan’s lion, who moved to a new home in West Chester Township this fall, is named Leo. At the time the book was first published in 2015, the whereabouts of Leo in Ross Township were widely considered unknown.

Until now.

“The lion you are receiving is carved out of stone and is in its original condition,” Dan Doran says. He and Anne worked with the West Chester officials to finalize the donation and plan Leo’s next big move.

Aside from glass beer bottles, collectibles and memorabilia from a bygone era in American history, little remains of the Windisch-Muhlhauser Brewing Company save for two stone lions, one restored 1881 timber-frame barn, and the family legacies binding their incredible stories together.

Burger closed its doors for good about 20 years after it’s believed the lions were taken down off the building. Hudepohl acquired the Burger brand, but ultimately couldn’t save the 1866 brewery. The structure was repurposed and razed in sections over the last 50 years. At one time the Cincinnati Ballet moved into 1555 Central Parkway, utilizing the cellars to curate costumes from about 1993 until 2021. A $300 million mixed-use development project in the West End is under way in 2023 at the former site of the brew house.

The next chapter in Leo’s epic journey begins this October. The Windisch-Muhlhauser lion will live out its days in the wild, outside Muhlhauser Barn, where it may once again be admired and appreciated, keeping watch over a family heirloom.

West Chester Community Services Department is building a base and staging an area of Beckett Park, near a paved walking path that encircles the barn at 8558 Beckett Road, where our community of 66,000 residents and 3,600 businesses – including a pair of its own modern, beer-producing Ohio craft breweries – welcomes the stone lion’s fateful arrival. The 150-acre park with playgrounds, picnic shelters, fishing ponds and trails is open to the public from dawn to dusk.

The Muhlhauser Barn and Moerlein Gazebo at Beckett Park was preserved around the turn of the 21st century and re-located to the park piece by piece, then rebuilt and restored with support from the Muhlhauser family and West Chester Township. The legendary event rental venue opened in 2008 and hosts about a hundred gatherings per year on the weekends from April through mid-November.

For more information about Muhlhauser Barn, its history and how to make reservations, visit www.WestChesterOH.org/Barn.