CINCINNATI — A 116-year-old Cincinnati staple has moved into a new home on East 6th Street.
Batsakes Hat Shop has relocated to 197 East 6th Street from its former home at the Terrace Plaza Hotel, because of ongoing renovation efforts on the building.
Owner Gus Miller plans to re-open the shop this week.
Miller's shop is unique; the hats within are handmade by Miller himself. It's also been a family business since Miller's relatives — Greek immigrants whose last name was pronounced “Bat-sah-kees” — opened the shop at a time when Theodore Roosevelt was president and the country comprised only 46 states.
Miller migrated from Greece to the United States as a young man in 1951 to help his cousin, Pete Batsakes, with the shop.
Batsakes was one of the few remaining street-level stores still occupying the Terrace Plaza building, which otherwise sat vacant for years.
The current renovations on the building were preceded by a 2019 lawsuit filed by the city of Cincinnati against Terrace Plaza Hotel owners after a chunk of plaster fell from the hotel and onto a passing car with two adults and a child inside in October 2018.
But the problems didn't stop there. The following January, months before the city's lawsuit, a water pipe burst at the hotel and flooded Batsakes and its neighbor, Wendel's men's clothing store.
Miller lost 159 hats and four autographed baseballs when the water from the burst pipe flooded his store through the ceiling.
Now the hat shop is celebrating a new chapter in its storied history in a new home, still in downtown Cincinnati where the shop has been located since 1907.
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