Recently, a friend asked if I’d be interested in visiting and writing about her parents’ home, which was about to hit the market. Having only a vague idea of where it was located – in Wauwatosa’s Washington Highlands – I said sure.
Then she told me which house it was. I recognized it immediately.
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The sprawling, Mediterranean-style brick house at 6150 Washington Circle sits on a high-profile lot near the east entrance to the Washington Highlands, but with shade and privacy bestowed by a pair of towering trees out front.
The 1928 Spanish Eclectic style house, with three bedrooms across 3,600 square feet on a nearly half-acre lot, hits the market this week, with showings slated to begin on July 6 via realtor Holly Swezey of B Real Co./Coldwell Banker.
The asking price is $1.175 million. The complete listing is here.
The house is a stunner on the outside, and if you see it at night, you’ll fall in love instantly. At least I did many years ago. Now I pass it on pretty much a daily basis, and it never fails to catch my eye.
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Inside, the house boasts original tile and hardwood floors, a vaulted ceiling in the living room, two beautiful spaces that jut out offering panoramic views of the leafy front yard, a large open kitchen, a wood-paneled dining room, and more.
Outside, there’s a private patio that has a brick grilling station.
“The neighborhood, the location (make it special),” says Swezey. “The way the layout is on the first floor. There are so many neat little rooms and entertainment areas. I think the architectural detail is just stunning: the arched windows and the clay tile roof.”
“I think the fact that it’s only been owned by three families is really special. The house has a really nice story to tell.”
That story includes the fact that it was built for a couple that was influential in the local Serbian community, then occupied by the founder of a Milwaukee industrial company that continues to operate in Brookfield, and then by the Gazzana family, which currently owns it.
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A Little History of Highlands
As I noted in this article last year, in 1916, a dozen years before construction of the house started, the Pabst family decided it wanted to develop its old hop and horse farm in Wauwatosa since it had shifted most of its agricultural attention out to the Oconomowoc area beginning in 1906.
Pabst contacted German-born Werner Hegemann and Ohio-born landscape architect Elbert Peets to design the new subdivision. The design of the Washington Highlands was heavily influenced by the en vogue garden city movement, which aimed to blend the best of urban and rural living.
That’s why the neighborhood – rather uniquely for its area – not only made Schoonmaker Creek a prominent feature, rather than running it underground in pipes, but was also designed in a way that embraces the natural terrain with curving streets that rise and fall with the existing land.
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These curving streets, and perhaps wartime anti-German sentiment, led some to believe that Hegemann – who also worked on the plan for Kohler with Peets (the latter also designed the Village of Greendale) – laid out the neighborhood to resemble a Prussian soldiers’ helmet. In fact, the shape was created by the streets that laced through the natural terrain.
Even today, the neighborhood is unique for its adherence to the designers’ philosophy that neighborhoods should feel like unique little villages rather than endless street grids graded flat and lined with identically designed houses.
Working with developers Richter, Dick & Reutemann, the lots were laid out, and the first houses went up in 1918. That same year, Pabst transferred ownership to the Washington Homes Association, a homeowners group.
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Unfortunately, the following year, the Highlands became the first Milwaukee-area neighborhood to enact a covenant that read, “at no time shall the land included in Washington Highlands or any part thereof, or any building thereon be purchased, owned, leased or occupied by any person other than of white race.” (This is now illegal thanks to the 1968 Fair Housing Act.)
A huge building boom began in the neighborhood in 1920, and 297 of the 373 homes in the Highlands were constructed between then and 1930. (In 1931 and ‘32, only one house went up each year, due to the Depression, and most of the rest came after the end of World War II. Only six were built from 1961 to 1990.)
The Radakovich family arrived near the tail end of the 1920s building boom.
The Radakovichs
Milan – born Oct. 3, 1893 – and Pava Radakovich – born Nov. 5 the same year – arrived in Milwaukee from Slovenia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) in 1912, fortunate to have not been able to secure tickets on the ship they had initially sought to book: the Titanic.
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They were married in 1914 and in September 1917 became citizens.
While some sources say that the Radokovichs’ house on 3rd Street was converted into the church that would become St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Cathedral, that doesn’t completely jibe with the church’s own history on its website, which doesn’t mention the Radakovich family at all.
However, it does note that, in 1912, “the house at 724 S. 3rd St. was purchased and transformed into a house of worship. The house was registered in the name of Rade Ostojic who acted as a temporary president. The house was purchased for $3,500. A down payment of $500 was made, and the remainder was paid off monthly on a land contract. The first Divine Liturgy was served on Christmas Day, Jan. 7, 1913.”
So, I’m not sure what to make of that.
In addition to working on the railroad and in a meat packing plant, Milan also sold real estate and insurance. For more than 25 years, he was a tavern-keeper at Milan’s Tavern, 1603 W. Bruce St., until his retirement in 1962, four years after Pava’s passing.
Milan was extremely active in church and ethnic group activities.
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His efforts during the World Wars as president of the Serb National Defense Council earned him the Order of St. Sava 5th Degree from King Peter II of Yugoslavia.
His work as president and treasurer at St. Sava – where he was a cantor for 70 years – on the Diocesan Board for a decade, as chair of the Serb Hall building committee, and as president and treasurer of the Jedinstvo Lodge 99 and as first president of the St. Sava Senior Citizen Club earned him the Order of St. Joanikije, the highest lay award in the Serbian Orthodox Church, and National Serbian Federation Man of the Year in 1893.
Milan died on Dec. 2, 1984, at the age of 91.
The Architect
The Radakovichs hired architect Arthur C. Runzler to design their new home.
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Runzler was a prolific architect in the area, well-known in his day, having designed homes and apartment buildings, and commercial and other buildings throughout the metro area. Among his many works is the 1927 Spanish-influenced Santa Monica School in Whitefish Bay.
Runzler also drew the Roosevelt Boulevard gas station that is now home to Sherman Perk coffee shop, in partnership with Urban Peacock, with whom he served on The State Association of Wisconsin Architects’ Fair Practice Committee in the 1930s.
In the 1940s, Runzler served as building inspector in the Town of Brookfield.
Arthur Charles Runzler was born in Milwaukee on July 31, 1890, the third child and second son to Wisconsin-born carpenter Hermann and his wife, German-born Minnie Budig.
Runzler, whose brother William and sister Rose were 9 and 7 years older than him respectively, attended UW-Madison.
After studying architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and working as a draftsman in the West Chester, Pennsylvania office of architect Clarence Wilson Brazer, he returned to Milwaukee, where by 1923 he had an office on Wells Street, and later at 728 N. Jefferson St.
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Though he would later live in Whitefish Bay and Brookfield, in 1925, Runzler designed his own house in Wauwatosa at 2016 N. 74th St., though he didn’t live in it very long.
The fact that he listed it for sale almost immediately and moved up the street the following year to another house he designed at 2161 N. 74th St., staying there only briefly, too, suggests that he may have built these as speculative properties that he always intended to sell and only lived in them temporarily.
In January 1928, another house he drew for the Highlands – an English Revival house at 6316 Washington Blvd. – earned “top honorable mention in a national competition held to raise the visibility of the use of common brick for residential construction,” according to the Wauwatosa Historical Society.
In 1952, Runzler retired and moved to Los Gatos, California, with his wife, with whom he had a daughter.
Runzler died on Jan. 21, 1962, in a hospital in San Jose after a month’s illness.
The House
Runzler designed a home in the Mediterranean-influenced “Spanish Eclectic style,” which the nomination report for the Washington Heights Historic District described as, “Houses in the Spanish Eclectic style are based on the historic architecture of Spain – whether exhibiting Moorish, Byzantine, Gothic or Renaissance influences.
“The style gained popularity after the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, in which architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue displayed his thorough knowledge of the Spanish Colonial architecture found throughout Latin America. This widely publicized exhibition inspired the fashionable architects of the 1920s and 1930s to look to Spain for design source material. Although the style is often called ‘Spanish Colonial Revival,’ the eclectic nature of the designs found in the Highlands are better described as ‘Spanish Eclectic.’
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“The highly rustic materials used in these houses, and throughout the Highlands, give the buildings in this district an unusual eclectic character.”
Whether this design was the idea of the architect of the Radakovichs is lost to time.
However, we do know there were some changes over the years.
Two years after Pava’s death in 1958, Milan sold the house to Alfred A. and Martha J. Anderson for $36,722.
Alfred had founded the A.A. Anderson Co., which sold pumps and pump equipment, in 1958 at 3616 W. Vliet St., and the company continues today as Anderson Process in Brookfield.
In 1967, the Andersons added an aluminum screen porch to the home’s north side, and nine years later they converted two rooms and a hall on the second floor into a library.
In 1987, they sold the 3,600-square-foot home to Tom and Nancy Gazzana for $149,900.
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The Gazzanas
“We loved it the minute we walked in the door,” Nancy, an artist, art therapist, and former art teacher at Alverno Elementary, told the Journal Sentinel in 2003. “It had a warm feeling to it, especially with all of the woodwork.”
According to writer Nancy Herrick, “Most of the original architectural elements were still in place when the Gazzanas … purchased it.”
However, work needed to be done, Nancy Gazzana said.
“We were a lot younger then and enjoyed doing that kind of thing,” she told Herrick.
The floors needed uncovering and, in some cases refinishing; woodwork needed attention; and in 1990, “tore down the walls of the kitchen, a small bedroom, and the hallway to create the kitchen/family room area. My husband loves to cook and likes having people around when he does it.”
Tom Gazzana worked at Children’s Hospital Health Systems.
In 2001, they removed the aluminum screen porch and replaced it with a year-round sunroom with a skylight.
The exterior was designed to match the details of the exterior of the rest of the house, and you’d likely not know it was an addition if you weren’t told.
The tile floor in the sunroom was a detail that Tom Gazzana especially liked, and when it wasn’t laid to his specifications, he had it done again.
The grilling station on the patio was constructed using the bricks leftover from this project.
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There are stained and leaded glass windows in the house that were custom-made according to designs by Nancy Gazzana.
I’ve been fortunate to know the Gazzanas’ daughter Laura Gazzana-Pagel for many years, but she lived there only a few years before heading off to college, as was also the case with her brother David.
Still, they are emotionally attached to the place, she says.
“They purchased the home in the late ‘80s and lived there together until my dad passed away in 2024,” Gazzana-Pagel says. “My mom has recently relocated. It was the home where we had all of our family gatherings including an annual Christmas Day celebration with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and always a ‘surprise’ visit from Santa.
“You’ll appreciate that my dad made endless pots of his famous sugo in that kitchen, also part of the annual Christmas tradition. After family left on Christmas, my brother David and I would invite our friends to come over after their own celebrations.
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“My parents loved to have a houseful and were always welcoming and in many cases like second parents to our friends.”
Laura’s brother David, who is two years younger, spent a little more time in the house and says that selling it, “is very hard for me. There are lots of spectacular memories in this house.
“It’s bittersweet for sure.”
