Historic Artifacts From Karl Ratzsch’s Restaurant Headed For Auction Block
Need a Cyril Colnik chandelier? How about a restaurant booth?
A Cyril Colnik-designed chandelier for sale at Karl Ratzsch’s auction. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
All good things come to an end.
Chuck Kahn and Patti Keating Kahn, owners of the Colby Abbot Building, are auctioning off the remaining fixtures from their best-known tenant: Karl Ratzsch’s restaurant.
Over its 113-year run, Ratzsch’s offered an Old World German ambiance, a focus on service and a place for gathering for special occasions. Now you can take more than leftovers home.
The couple had held off selling the items after the restaurant closed in 2017, hoping they would help draw another tenant, but are now selling the fixtures while continuing to market the two-level, 5,600-square-foot space to future tenants.
Gerlach Companies will launch an online auction on Wednesday, Sept. 17. Bidding runs through Oct. 7. Three in-person inspection dates are scheduled for Sept. 25, 27 and Oct. 4. Each will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m..
Included in the 470-item auction are the signature cuckoo clock, Cyril Colnik-designed chandeliers and metalwork, a painting of Mama Ratzsch, shields and a series of large, 1940s murals that depict a German village designed by La Vera Pohl, who was involved in the creation of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Smaller murals, each representing a story or song, are also available from the troubadour and fable rooms. Additionally, figurines that were attached to many walls throughout are also available.
Many of the pieces are believed to be made in Germany, but improved in Milwaukee.
“What we think is that Karl Ratzsch, who traveled to Germany every year and brought back pieces for the restaurant, may have sourced [chandeliers] in Germany or Europe,” said Kahn. Ratzsch, Kahn said, would hire famed Milwaukee metalsmith Cyril Colnik, an Austrian immigrant, to augment wood or basic metal pieces he brought back so they could hang.
Kahn has no estimate for what the auction might raise, but knows several of the pieces are expected to draw significant interest. “I think it’s going to be substantial,” he said of one of the Colnik pieces.
The items for sale include stained glass windows and metal signs that once adorned the building’s facade. Following a June 2020 fire in a different part of the building, the vacant restaurant facade was updated.
Kahn, a mediator and retired judge, grew up around the restaurant. The Kahn family has long owned the six-story building where the restaurant leased space, and the auction also includes several light fixtures, chairs and other items that date back nearly 100 years from the office building.
The restaurant opened in 1904 on N. Water Street, and relocated to its Colby Abbot space, 320 E. Mason St., in 1929. The Ratzsch family sold it to a group of employees in 2003, who in turn sold it to chef Thomas Hauck in 2016.
Joining all of the high-profile items for sales are the very booths patrons sat in, antlers that were mounted to the walls and remains of the kitchen, which has since been gutted.
You may have a sense of deja vu when it comes to Karl Ratzsch’s auctions. Shortly after the business closed, steins and other loose items were claimed by Hauck’s lender, Waukesha State Bank, and sold at an auction.
Want a keepsake? Or a new display cabinet? Or just a trip down memory lane? Make sure to stop by one of the three in-person inspection dates.
Photos
Urban Milwaukee is a tenant in the Colby Abbot Building.
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