Urb's Cafe: A legacy of good food and friendship

When The Brick House restaurant bar opened in downtown Port Clinton this summer, it continued a tradition of good food and friendship that began when Urban Ganther opened Urb’s Café, also a restaurant bar, in the building in 1936.

Urban’s brother, Ernest Ganther, took over the business after Urban unexpectedly died in 1939, and he operated Urb’s Café the way his brother did — as a family-friendly bar and restaurant. Today, Ernest’s daughter, 95-year-old Dorothy Buchman, still has vivid memories of her family’s bar.

Buchman was in sixth grade when her “Uncle Urb” died in his apartment above the bar.

“He was a big man — 6-foot-5 and 350 pounds. It took seven men to get him down the steps,” she said.

Downtown Port Clinton 'always busy'

After her uncle’s death, Buchman and her family moved from Toledo to Port Clinton so her father could take over Urb’s Café. At the time, Buchman said, downtown Port Clinton was “always busy.”

“There were several dress shops and stores that sold only hats,” she said. “We had two five-and-dimes, and the kids would roller skate uptown.”

In the midst of all that activity was Urb’s Café, where locals drank and dined and soldiers from nearby Camp Perry and Erie Proving Grounds came to relax when they had breaks from their duties. The country was embroiled in World War II, and the quiet of Urb’s Café provided a respite for locally stationed soldiers. Eventually, Ernest remodeled Urban’s former upstairs living area into a cocktail lounge so soldiers had a quiet room to bring visitors.

“It was a nice place for them to sit and visit and eat and drink. It was a nice meeting place for families,” Buchman said. “That was very thoughtful of my dad to do that.”

But it wasn’t just soldiers who visited Urb’s Café. It was common at that time to see Italian Prisoners of War on work privilege around Port Clinton, and Buchman said that, although she and her sisters were not allowed to go near the prisoners, her father befriended some of them.

Art by Italian POWs displayed at Urb's

“Several of the Italian POWs were artists, and my dad would hang their art in the bar so people could see they were good people, even if they were POWs,” she said.

Buchman and her sisters, Virginia and Suzanne, weren’t allowed to talk to the bar’s customers, either. They often rode their bikes to the bar after school to help wash dishes, but were “only allowed to go in the back door.”

Dorothy’s mother, Frances, helped out at the bar on weekends. With so many locals serving in the war or working for the war effort locally, employees were hard to find. When the weekends got busy, Ernest would often ask Frances to pitch in.

“She was little, so it was hard for her to waitress, but she did it,” Buchman said.

There were slow seasons, too, but Ernest found a way to drum up business amongst local farmers.

“He had this case — he called it his ‘medicine case’ — and he would drive out in the country looking for farmers in the field,” Buchman said. “He’d stop and tell them ‘I have this medicine case, and I think you need a little picker-upper.”

Ernest would pour the farmers — and himself — a few drinks in the field and spend time talking at the edge of the crops. Later, when the farmers came to town, they’d stop by Urb’s Café for another drink with Ernest.

Earnest listened to 'every crazy story'

“He encouraged fellowship among people in the bar,” Buchman said. “He used to listen to every crazy story people would tell him.”

On a recent afternoon, Buchman’s daughter, Laura White, took her for surprise visit to The Brick House so Buchman could reminisce about Urb’s Café. The visit brought back memories, even though the building looks much different than it did when her family owned it.

“It has a cleaner look now. When I was a kid, it always smelled of cigarette smoke and cigar smoke,” Buchman said.

While the ladies ate pizza, a group of 10 women walked in. Buchman said she “knew all of them,” proving that The Brick House is continuing the tradition of good food and familiar faces that began at Urb’s Café nearly a century ago.

“The bar still has the community fellowship it had when my grandma and grandpa owned it,” White said.

Contact correspondent Sheri Trusty at sheritrusty4@gmail.com.