Building no. 58

The first documented mention of this building (which contained an inn) dates from 1644, when it was sold on the feast of St. Mark by Pavel Ruka’s widow Eva to her son-in-law Simon Fux for 290 gulden. After the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) the building became derelict; in 1666 it was purchased by Ondřej Klimek for a mere 150 gulden. However, Klimek appears to have found it difficult to pay even this relatively small sum, and he did not invest in essential repairs. In 1699, the town therefore had to sell the house; the new owner was the butcher Jiřík Šajar. Nevertheless, it was only much later that the house was repaired (or even rebuilt completely), when in 1802 Franz Langfort married the widow of the previous owner, the tax-collector Anton Řehulka. In 1821, the house was valued at 1 000 gulden.
Written and pictorial sources indicate that at this time, the house had a single floor and was built of masonry – unlike the arcade, which was a timber structure. The rear part of the parcel contained a small wooden outbuilding, and fruit trees grew in the central part of the parcel.
The building underwent major changes in 1903–1905 under the ownership of Ferdinand Staub. The older structures in the front part of the parcel (facing onto Velká Street) were replaced by a new building with four floors, containing apartments and shops, and in the rear part of the parcel (facing onto Pivovarská Street) Staub added a three-floor apartment building with a wine tavern. The two buildings were connected (on all their floors) by a corridor with a staircase and shared toilet facilities.
After the death of Moritz Westreich, who owned the building from 1875 to 1884, a detailed inventory of his estate was drawn up. This document reveals that Westreich, a Jewish innkeeper who died at the age of 52, had owned personal property including the following: a gold pocket-watch with a double case; a gold chain and a medallion worth 120 gulden (for comparison, nine years previously Westreich had bought the building for 14 000 gulden); a gold ring with a value of 20 gulden; winter and summer suits; and a grey fur coat worth 12 gulden. The inn had a serving counter with three beer taps, six tables of various colours, eight benches and 40 chairs, a billiard table worth 100 gulden, paintings of the Emperor Franz Joseph I, Empress Elisabeth (Sisi) and Crown Prince Rudolf, and plaster busts of Goethe and Schiller. From the lists of the cellar inventory we learn that the inn served rye spirit, sugar-beet rum, Cuban rum, bitter liqueur, kontušovka (a flavoured spirit), brandy, vermouth, Pilsner beer, red wine, Burgundy wine, and chartreuse (a French herbal liqueur). A replica of the inn forms part of the exhibition.
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