Moving Forward

Original content from STLtoday.com

Bob Kochan Age  •  58
Family  •  Daughter, Emily, 28

Occupation  •  Owner of Kochan & Co., an advertising and marketing company in St. Louis

Home  •  University City

Bob Kochan opens the front door of his 1928 brick Colonial and with a wide grin, offers a quick synopsis of the surprises waiting inside.

“It’s eclectic,” says Bob, owner of a St. Louis advertising and marketing company and former marketing director for Six Flags. “It’s kind of like a museum.”

Inside, the home exudes Bob’s penchant for the unique. Almost every wall, every shelf, every cranny, offers a mix of the old and the odd.

The living room juxtaposes some of his vintage magician posters with nhis chunky, arts-and-crafts-style furniture. An old radio sits on a shelf.   In the room’s rear corner rests a square grand piano made by the St. Louis Piano Co. that was once on the Belle of St. Louis riverboat in the late 1800s. He bought it for $200.

Even though he doesn’t play, “I’ve been carrying this piano around with me since the 1970s,” he says. “It’s a conversation piece. I’ve told my family, when I die, just lay me in it. It’s about the right size.”

A piece of pottery sits on the coffee table, off center, “Just like me,” he says, laughing.

Bob bought the house in 1997 after looking at homes in the area for about a year. Mostly, he says, he was looking for a home that would fit “all this stuff.”

Bob is not a collector in the traditional sense, except for the stone lithograph posters.

They are a tribute to his days as a magician, which helped him earn a little extra money and landed him a job at Six Flags. (Even though he retired from that profession long ago, Bob keeps his magic tricks on a basement shelf — top hat, magic rings and all.)

So how does he decide on the offbeat treasures that fill his home? “If I see it and it speaks to me, I get it.”

Bob’s love of music is inescapable. He uses the dining room to showcase some of his favorite music makers. Just off the room’s entry is a fully functional Seeburg jukebox from 1950. He found the jukebox in an ad in the Post-Dispatch and restored it. Visitors can take their pick from hit tunes, Western songs and not-so politically-correct hillbilly offerings. You can hear songs ranging from Amy Grant to Dean Martin. In the opposite corner, a 1919 crank phonograph sits atop a push button radio from the 1940s.

“Every bedroom should come with a barber chair,” Bob says. Well, of  course. Especially if it’s like this one. Bob was getting his hair cut one day at Earl’s International in Clayton when the owner remarked how she wanted to sell her father’s ornate wooden   —  and rare  —  barber chair, covered in red velvet. The chair now holds a spot of honor in the corner of his bedroom, near the windows. Bob says some days he likes to crank the seat back and relax

Some people may tuck away their whatnots, but Bob puts many of his on prominent display in a window seat at the top of the stairs. Where else was he going to put them? he asked. He even bought a special sign to hang overhead. It says, “Novelties Toys and Magic.” Here are just a few of the things you’ll find there: a fly swatter shaped like a hand, an old scale, an old Coca-Cola syrup barrel, a blow torch and a grade school picture of the owner himself, when he was known as “Robbie.’