Ligonier Tavern auction features kitchen equipment, decor from iconic restaurant

For those looking for a last taste from the iconic Ligonier Tavern and Table, now’s your chance.

Everything from commercial dough mixers to beer tap handles and signed artwork is going to the highest bidder in a liquidation auction of items at the shuttered restaurant.

The online-only auction by Greensburg’s Reed’s Auction Co. began in late July and is scheduled to end Aug. 17.

The next chapter for the historic Victorian building at the corner of Ligonier’s West Main and South Fairfield streets likely won’t include a similar restaurant.

Auction company owner Jason Reed pointed out that the three-story house is being emptied of all restaurant-related equipment and furnishings, which represent the majority of the more than 500 lots of items up for grabs.

Reed said the new owner of the property “had to make sure another traditional restaurant wasn’t going in there, or they may not need to have had this auction.”

“It’s sad to see it not being a restaurant,” Ligonier Mayor Ormond “Butch” Bellas said. “We need another good restaurant in town.

“At least it’s going to be occupied by somebody. I think they’ll do OK.”

A spokesman for the new owner, real estate developer Comity Land LLC, indicated the building will be redeveloped for multiple tenants.

In a statement Wednesday, the spokesman said, “This property has great significance to the community and a long history. It is important to us to be able to preserve the property while breathing new life into it.

“We are thrilled to partner with a number of local businesses that will operate at the building. We will be able to share more as we continue with our redevelopment.”

Ligonier Tavern and Table announced its closure in December, after six years under the most recent management of the restaurant. According to court documents, the closure occurred after the restaurant filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy the previous August.

Online records of the Westmoreland County recorder of deeds indicate the property came into the ownership of Somerset Trust Co., which sold it June 16 to Comity for $475,000.

An unusual aspect of the Ligonier Tavern auction, Reed said, is a wide range of available kitchen and restaurant equipment that would be of interest to anyone planning to open or supplement their own eating establishment.

“Everything that was there the last day they were in business is going to be sold,” he said. “We do a lot of business liquidations. It’s very rare that nothing has been removed.”

Among the auction lots listed at reedsauctionco.com is the restaurant’s “hot line recipe book.”

Reed said the Ligonier Tavern auction has attracted much interest.

Bellas said a meat slicer caught his eye among the auction lots.

“We’ve probably had over 50 calls,” Reed said early this week. “Obviously, people really care — especially in Ligonier.”

Reed said many callers have asked about the working condition of kitchen equipment.

In addition, he said, “A lot of the questions so far have been on what items people could buy that had a (restaurant) logo on it.”

Those items, he said, range from menus to interior saloon doors. The doors are glazed with an image of the restaurant’s name in an ascending decorative script above a portrait of a woman in period clothing.

Listed as Lot No. 1 is a vintage porcelain bar-top tap head that depicts a man in Colonial garb hunting a deer.

“It’s a really cool piece,” said Reed. “It had been way up top when you went in the bar.”

Several auction lots consist of artwork and other wall decor that once added to the atmosphere for Ligonier Tavern patrons.

“I was told that several of them were obtained from local artists through the years,” Reed said.

The works include a painting of a pair of Labrador retrievers and a black-and-white image titled “Ligonier Highwayman.”

An additional factor driving interest in the auction, Reed said, is “the history and the historical presence of the facility itself.”

The large brick home was built in 1895 for William J. Potts (1852-1923), who operated a drug store in Ligonier and served multiple terms as the borough’s chief burgess. It was reportedly one of the first homes in Ligonier to have indoor plumbing.

By the late 1920s, the home had been transformed into the Lincoln Hotel and Restaurant.

As of Wednesday, auction items attracting the highest bids — in three figures — included an espresso machine, the meat slicer and two mixers.

A preview date is set for 4 to 6 p.m. Aug. 15.

Reed said, in his experience, “Most of the action in bidding doesn’t happen until the very end. A lot of the items don’t have much bidding on them, but they will for sure later on.”