Viewed as a whole, Mokena is divided up into lots and blocks, looking like a cross section of squares and rectangles. If we see it as a surveyor’s plat map, it is sliced up like a pie. Considered with a more flavorful bend, the individual flavor and persona of each slice can be fully appreciated. To look at the history of each lot in town, is to be face to face with our narrative on a grand scale. Taken as an example, 11014 Front Street is no different, boasting of a rich story that goes back almost 160 years.
This tale begins with the humble family of Andreas and Margaret Schuberth, late of the tiny northern Bavarian village of Wolfersgrün. They arrived in our environs in 1847, as part of the great Germanic wave of emigration to eastern Will County in that era. They settled here in a world where neither Mokena nor Frankfort yet existed, nor was there any township government to speak of. The railroads that would come to crisscross our neighborhood were but a distant dream. By 1862, the Schuberths had prospered and owned a farm of no small means on today’s 191st Street, just east of the modern intersection of Route 45.
Aside from being early settlers to what would later become Mokena, the Schuberths also earned their place in history by being one of the founding families of the St. Mary German Catholic Church in 1864. Four years earlier, a federal census taker recorded Andreas and Margaret on their homestead with a family of four living children, ranging in age from 22 to 14. Their oldest, John, was working as a carpenter. As the Civil War began, he struck out on his own and moved to Mokena, a young and growing community that had only existed for ten years. Decades later, it would be recalled through the haze of time that John Schuberth erected a building at today’s 11014 Front Street in 1862. Typical for its era, this quaint two-story structure housed his new hardware store, and was fitted out with living quarters not only above it, but also in a small wing on the building’s east side.
Having formerly stood at today's 11014 Front Street, this ca 1910 image shows the historic structure was built by John Schuberth in 1862. (image courtesy of Richard Quinn)
The Schuberth family became firmly rooted in business affairs of 19th century Mokena, as John’s younger brother Nicholas opened a long-lasting saloon not far from the hardware store around 1870. John was doing well enough by 1872 to take out a large ad in that year’s county directory, in which he described himself as a “dealer in general hardware, iron, nails, copper and sheet iron ware”, as well as highlighting the stoves and agricultural implements he had on hand. Further illustrating the array of goods that could be had at the store was an insert that appeared four years later on the front page of the Mokena Advertiser, that boasted “John Schuberth would inform his friends and the public generally, that he has just put upon the floor in his store the largest and most complete assortment of cooking ranges, stoves, parlor hard and soft coal and wood burners ever shown in Mokena or surrounding towns.”
This ad from John Schuberth's hardware store appeared in an 1872 Will County directory.
A respected man in our community, in the spring of 1882 the town solons appointed John Schuberth the village’s police magistrate. As Mokena had no established police department to speak of at the time, the hardware dealer presided over cases of local legal infractions that were brought before him by the town constable. Typical instances were those of alcohol-fueled mayhem that occurred when area farmhands came to town to ring in the weekend in Mokena saloons. Involvement of the owners of this property in village law enforcement would become a common thread in its history, and would be seen in more than one figure in its future.
In addition to selling iron goods of just about every description imaginable, John Schuberth demonstrated his versatility by becoming an agent for steamship travel by 1888. Somewhere in the sunset of the 19th century he moved to Chicago, where he branched out into real estate. He lived there for the rest of his life, before breathing his last in 1927 at the age of 89, three decades past the life expectancy for an American male in this time.
As is so often the case with our history, there are a series of blank spots in the narrative of this property, things only coming back into focus with the emergence of a Mokenian named Jacob M. Zahn. The scion of an old Mokena family, he took up ownership of a new hardware store in this spot sometime in the years leading up to 1900. Zahn’s business here was successful, and in the spring of 1904 he began to carry the new-fangled spiral washing machine manufactured in Tinley Park, which users declared to be “the best made.” In 1901, mere three years after telephones made their debut in the village, the Northwestern Telephone Company put a switchboard in Jacob Zahn’s hardware store, it being operated by the faithful shopkeep and his wife, Alice. A news report from that fall described Jacob as being “busy as a hive of bees” in his diligent work manning the board.
Zahn also took a seat on the village board as a town trustee in 1897, a local office he held until 1905. His popularity amongst town folk is evidenced by the election held in the spring of 1903, when he received a whopping 50 votes from the men of Mokena, at a time when our population was barely 300. During his time as trustee, he worked on various projects around town, including the 1898 construction of our first water tower, which stood for many years on Front Street, just east of its intersection with Division Street.
Jacob Zahn was a well-known Mokena businessman in his day, but he was not blessed with good health. In the fall of 1904 he was bowled over with particularly severe case of bronchitis which resulted in his traveling to a “fresh air camp” in Ottawa in the early weeks of the following year. He manifested signs of improvement there, and also procured a tent in which he lived upon his return to Mokena to continue the treatment. However, in spite of all the efforts of early 20th century medicine, severe hemorrhages developed, and he expired at his Front Street home on May 31st, 1905, a young man of 38 years. Leaving behind his wife Alice and two young daughters named Viola and Pearl, his mortal remains were interred beneath the green sod of St. John’s Cemetery just outside the village.
That autumn, Alice Zahn sold the hardware store to Fred and William Niethammer of Kankakee County, while not only keeping ownership of the apartments in the building, but also continuing to run the telephone switchboard. Soon after they set down their stakes here, in the fall of 1907 village correspondent William Semmler of the Joliet Weekly News, referred to the two brothers as “wide awake hardware dealers”, and that October William bought out Fred’s interest in the store, who then went to work in Chicago, before ultimately becoming an Indiana farmer. Like those who went before him at this location on Front Street, William became active in local affairs and cared deeply about our community. He came to be an important part of St. John’s Brotherhood, a men’s organization of the church, where he served as chairman of the building committee when the new church was dedicated in 1923, as well as a school trustee and clerk of the local camp of the Modern Woodmen of America. Like John Schuberth before him and those who would come after him at this spot, Niethammer had a hand in law enforcement in Mokena, being appointed police magistrate in the spring of 1907 by the village board. Aside from patriarch William, the Niethammer family was composed of matriarch Ida, and their two children Ruth and Hugo. The family came to live in a roomy, historic house on First Street, lending their name informally to the narrow stretch of today’s Midland Avenue that ran north to Third Street from their homestead.
William Niethammer of Mokena, circa 1922.
The tenure of William Niethammer brought modernity to the old hardware store, with glistening electric light being installed for the first time in August 1913. His business withstood the trying years of the First World War, before Niethammer ultimately closed up shop in the early 1920s. The last hardware enterprise to be housed here was the store of young Mokena brothers Milton and Roy Krapp, who moved their concern two doors to the west when they traded the property to local newcomer Walter Fisher in the spring of 1923, who opened a general store here. A fresh-faced man of 26 years, Fisher was born in the Russian Empire of Jewish heritage, before he and his family flocked to America’s shore in the early part of the 20th century, likely in an effort to escape the czar’s hostility to people of their faith. Having first come to Mokena by way of Joliet with his wife Ethel and two little daughters in 1922, Walter Fisher’s store handled everything from pail candy, union suits to fancy dress suspenders, as well as phonographs, at the going rate of $98 (or about $1,500 in today’s money) and individual records for 49 cents each.
Following the already long-established pattern of owners with law enforcement connections, Walter Fisher was appointed a Will County Sheriff’s deputy at the end of 1922 to combat Prohibition era bootlegging in the neighborhood. During his tenure he did much to fight crime in and around the village, his biggest moment being when he and Mokena constable John Frisch intercepted a truckload of illicit booze passing through the community in March 1923. Alas, Walter Fisher is one of the most tragic figures in our town’s history. While pursuing a car thief in April 1926, the Front Street storekeeper-turned lawman was shot and killed just outside Orland Park. As a hero in Mokena’s story, it bears noting that nothing in the village, neither street nor park nor public building, bears Walter Fisher’s name in memory of his fearless sacrifice. This is a glaring omission in our community. For the complete account of this case and Deputy Fisher’s life, the reader is directed to this author’s 2018 book The 1926 Orland Park Murder Mystery.
Walter Fisher, a hero in Mokena's history, seen here around 1920.
In the wake of Fisher’s untimely death, the property was host to several short-lived enterprises. Not only did Ethel Fisher carry on her husband’s store here for a brief period, but Fred and Alma Brown had opened a rooming house in the upstairs of the building by the end of the decade as well as a combined ice cream shop and snack shop in the structure’s one-story eastern wing. Operating at the same time in main western side of the building was the oft-forgotten Bethard Chevrolet dealership. In the crisp early morning hours of November 2nd, 1929, a guest of Lizzie Moriarty, who lived in the house immediately east of the property in question, was jarred from her slumbers by the sounds of breaking glass and the acrid smell of smoke. Fearing the worst, she woke Mrs. Moriarty, who went outside and discovered that the west side of the Fisher building was engulfed in flames. In the way in which it can only be done in a small town, word of mouth stirred the volunteer fire department to life, who sounded their alarm on the village water tower a few doors to the east, and in no time they were out in full force, with a crowd of sleepy onlookers to boot. In what would prove to be one of the most spectacular fires in Mokena’s chronology, the firemen vigorously fought a blaze that would be momentarily tamed, only for it to reignite time and again in another part of the sprawling building. The News-Bulletin glumly quipped that the fire “was a stubborn one”, and that the flames “appeared to be between the walls.” All the equipment belonging to the Bethard dealership was lost to the conflagration, as was everything in the Browns’ section of the building, who carried no insurance to offset their loss.
By the time the last ember winked out, the story was only just beginning. Almost two weeks after the fire, the state fire marshal showed up in town, who had more than a passing interest in Mr. Bethard, whose first name has been lost to time. In an interesting detour to the story, it turned out that Bethard hadn’t been seen in Mokena since the fire, and that he was in no small amount of debt. To top things off, he had recently invested in an establishment called The Green Gables just south of the village at today’s Wolf and LaPorte Roads that the News-Bulletin referred to as a “roadhouse”, implying in the lingo of the day that shady business was afoot there. Stories were making the rounds in town that illegal alcohol was could be had there, with the News-Bulletin winking to its readers that “quite fast company was seen there” and that “the place was open all night and looked like one of New York’s famed night clubs.” Talk of Bethard’s alleged speakeasy even came up at a village board meeting, where it was intimated that “gun play” had taken place there between a scorned husband and his wife’s supposed lover.
Mokena was agog, and the gossip titillated residents. How much of it beheld the truth was never ascertained, but Mr. Bethard re-surfaced in time to communicate from Chicago to the News-Bulletin that he vehemently denied everything that was being attributed to him, and declared that he was “trying hard to get on his feet again” after the Front Street fire. In any case, he never went back into business in Mokena. The burnt hulk of this historic Front Street building was unable to be saved, and was ultimately knocked down.
In the aftermath of the 1929 fire, the lot sat vacant for years as life carried on without it. In time it became an overgrown tangle of foliage, with one account in the News-Bulletin describing it as a “young forest” in 1945. At this point in the narrative, we can open the books to a new chapter in the history of this property. Enter now the family of Anthony and Evanis Dina, both natives of Chicago. When the Dinas first arrived in our midst in 1947, they became one of the first settlers of the new Sunny Acres subdivision, which sprouted up north of the village proper in the days after the Second World War. The Dinas came to raise five children in the community, while Tony, as he was called by those who knew him, was a barber by trade, having first taken up the scissors when he was nine years old. All paths led to his becoming a tonsorial artist, for the young Chicagoan attended barbering school at the age of 13, and became the proud owner of his barber’s license as a 17-year-old. Part of the revered Greatest Generation, Dina served in the Marine Corps for one year during the war, before getting a medical discharge on account of a spinal injury suffered during judo training.
Tony Dina hung out his shingle in Mokena, and in 1950, had a new building erected of concrete blocks on the foundations of the old Fisher building on Front Street. His first local customer was the shop’s builder, who got a trim while sitting on a sawhorse. A year later their home subdivision was struck by a nasty tornado, and while the Dinas and their property were lucky enough to be spared, matriarch Evanis felt the family would be safer living in the confines of the village. So it was that comfortable living quarters were added onto the north end of the barber shop soon after, and the Dinas moved home and hearth to town.
The former barbershop of Tony Dina at 11014 Front Street.
Tony Dina’s barbershop was quite the busy place in Mokena, and by 1955 had the luxury of not only being air conditioned, but also had a TV that customers watched as they waited their turn in the chair. The shop was very much a family place, where no racy mens’ magazines could be found, and no rough language would be tolerated, as it was common for village lads to stop in to have their ears lowered. Dina was a man who built relationships with his customers, as he was known on occasion to pack his tools into an old doctor’s bag and visit them if they should happen to be at Silver Cross Hospital, doling out haircuts, shaves and facial massages while refusing to take any payment for the same.
In his decades of residence in Mokena, Dina became a pillar of our community. He was active with the town chapter of AmVets here he served as post commander, was a founder of our Civil Defense Unit, and even served as a village trustee from 1967 to 1975. Adding to this already impressive list of accomplishments, he was a volunteer police officer, and later took a seat on the village’s police commission. Evanis Dina, known as a very caring and compassionate woman, made history when she received an appointment as our community’s first policewoman, a position in which she wore a badge issued by the town government.
An idyllic scene of 1950s Mokena, Tony Dina Sr at left, with his brother Dominick on the right. The home of Mrs. Lizzie Moriarty can be seen behind them, which still stands at today's 11008 Front Street. (image courtesy of Dominick Dina)
1968 saw Tony Dina Jr come to work in his Dad’s shop, cutting hair in the chair next to his father. After more than three decades years of serving Mokena, Tony the Elder retired in 1981. Tony Jr took up the torch and kept up the business in the time-honored shop on Front Street, where he was known far and wide for his adherence to the old traditions of the barbering trade. Tony Dina Sr passed away in 1989 in what would have been his 80th year, followed by his wife Evanis, who reached the dignified age of 98, in 2016.
Many are the people in Mokena’s narrative who have some attachment to 11014 Front Street, be it business owners, customers of long standing, or simply residents who have considered the buildings here, be it the old barbershop or the much older building that went up in smoke in 1929, to be old landmarks. A fair number of the stories of these places have been remembered, being inscribed upon the old pages of local history, while others have disappeared into the ether, with all those who remembered them having long since crossed the great beyond. This historic property is now for sale, and soon, a new owner will be on the scene. Maybe the old barbershop will be mercilessly erased from our landscape like so many of the other landmarks that have graced Mokena. Whatever happens, let us never forget those who came before.
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