P.O. Box Twenty One

The story

For decades, Westerville was the self-proclaimed Dry Capital of the World—the exact town where the Anti-Saloon League set up shop and printed over 40 tons of anti-liquor propaganda. Long before national Prohibition took effect, a local saloon keeper named Henry Corbin attempted to open a drinking establishment here in the late 1800s, only to have his building blown up with explosives twice. Operating a hidden bar in the basement of Westerville's historic 1935 post office isn't just a clever layout; it's a deliberate, historic middle finger to the town's temperance past.

Opened by High Bank Distillery co-founder and head distiller Adam Hines, P.O. Box Twenty One gets its name from the 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition in 1933. The building actually served as Westerville's post office during the mid-20th century—the very postal center that mailed out temperance literature across the nation. High Bank turned the ground floor into a distillery pub and carved out this subterranean hideaway beneath it, keeping the postal heritage alive by building a fake 1990s mailing lobby in front of the actual bar.

Inside the 40-seat underground lounge, the decor doubles as a local history museum. Framed on the walls are genuine Prohibition-era medical prescriptions written by doctors so patients could legally buy whiskey, alongside hundreds of authentic vintage postcards mailed through Ohio post offices during the dry era. The drink menu spans dozens of craft concoctions, but the essential order is the Corbin's Old Fashioned—named directly for the saloon keeper whose business was repeatedly dynamited down the street.