Where Mortar and Pestle Worked: The Story of the Hensel Building

   No small amount of time has been spent on these pages detailing the histories of our landmarks in Mokena, of the people and stories that make up our narrative. A few of the places can still be visited, locations where one is face to face with past in all its rich, wondrous glory. However, a significant number of the old mainstays are long gone, permanently erased from our landscape as if they were never there. They live on in the memories of those who knew them, memories that in many cases, belong to increasingly fewer people as time goes on. Just one of these places was the historic structure that stood at today’s 11112 Front Street, the current site of Curtain Call Theater. 

   This old place so fondly remembered by countless Mokenians was a stunning example of vernacular Italianate architecture, a style that was in vogue in eastern Will County in the late 1860s and into the 1870s. It stood at two stories, with ample space on the ground floor for a business, of which several of differing kinds were housed here over the years. This part of the old building boasted big glass windows, allowing those on the street to see the wares displayed in them, and in the days before electricity, to allow ample natural light inside. In the interwar era, gilt letters reading “Drug Store – R. Hensel” could be read on the glass, with tin signs on the front façade proclaiming “Ice Cold Coca Cola Sold Here.” The magnificent false front had two sets of four wooden cornices, or brackets, as were so commonly found in Italianate architecture. Not to be missed in the eaves of the false front was the brilliant motif of a rising sun, carved by hand into the wood by some artisan, whose name has been swept away by the tides of time. The place was a perfect slice of Americana and a piece of Main Street USA.

 

An idyllic view of Front Street, circa 1925. The historic structure at left stood at today's 11112 Front Street, and over the years housed both the Zumstein store and the Hensel pharmacy.

 

   There exists an ancient plat map of Mokena bearing the date 1862, which is the Rosetta stone for understanding our small village in the Civil War era. This piece of surveying work indicates that some sort of structure already stood at the site in question at this early date, only ten years after the town was first laid out. Whether a regular house or a commercial building, is lost to history after all these years. What is clear however, is that the old structure that is remembered by so many Mokenians as having stood here probably didn’t come until a little later, leaving the fate of the original building here a mystery.

 

   As the 19^th century marched on, this Front Street property became intimately tied to the Zumstein family. Patriarch Louis Zumstein first saw the light of day on July 12^th, 1849 in the small village of Mittelbrunn, in what is today the southwest of Germany. The young man found himself on America’s shore as a 20-year-old, and promptly made his home in Mokena. Zumstein settled in our fair town during an era when a good number of the adults in the village came from somewhere else, he being part of the large Bavarian diaspora who lived in our neck of the woods. In the summer of 1876, exactly a month after our country celebrated her centennial, Louis Zumstein married Sophia Hauck, the daughter of a Mokena wagonmaker at the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church. 

 

   Less than a year later, in January 1877, possibly awash in wedding money, Zumstein purchased this Front Street property from town doctor H.W. Alexander. Interestingly, within a few years of acquiring the Mokena property, Louis Zumstein also bought a country store at Alpine, a settlement that had sprouted up almost four miles north of our village in Orland Township. Later a small hamlet would come to life there, but until then, Zumstein took an appointment as the new country post office’s postmaster in 1883. It’s not clear at this late point what was happening at his Mokena property in the time he was busy in Alpine, but what is known, is that Zumstein opened a store in his Front Street building sometime in the second to last decade of the 19^th century. His obituary, published decades later, stated with authority that the Mokena shop opened in 1886, while another source stated with confidence that it must have been as early as 1880. 

 

Louis Zumstein, circa 1890.

   Mokena was kind to the Zumsteins and their business, with things humming along to such a degree that they were able to build a one-story addition to the west side of their Front Street store in 1902 that opened up a previously residential area to be converted into retail space. In this store, which was lit by carbide gas, a shopper would have found a little bit of everything for sale. A 1910 ad described “the choicest stock of fresh groceries in town”, as well as “a full line of dry goods and notions” not to mention “flour, feed and salt always on hand.” Louis Zumstein himself was a well-regarded citizen of Mokena, a contemporary having said “in business circles Mr. Zumstein was recognized as an outstanding character, a man of integrity and honor…in religion he was firm in his convictions, just and unassuming in his manner, and a faithful member of the St. John Evangelical Church.”

 

   The Zumstein children were just as well known in town as their parents were. There were seven of them who entered the world between 1876 and 1891, of which four survived to adulthood. Frieda was active in St. John’s Sunday school as well as the village’s Home Study Club, a precursor to today’s Women’s Club. She was a silky-voiced singer who performed at countless local funerals and events in her day. Other parts of the Zumstein family circle were daughters Bertha and Georgia, as well as son Arthur. During the First World War, Arthur Zumstein was one of our community’s doughboys, having served on the now-forgotten Russian front during the American foray in Siberia. Every manner of souvenirs and mementoes from his time in this far-off land were displayed in the windows of the store upon his triumphant return to Mokena. 

 

Frieda (left) and Bertha Zumstein (right) of Mokena, circa 1910.

 

   Louis Zumstein breathed his last on May 11^th, 1923, and after his passing, Frieda and Arthur, who had previously worked as clerks in the store, kept up the business, although it’s not clear for how long. A new leaf was overturned in 1925, with the arrival of the Hensel family of Chicago. Even though patriarch Richard Hensel was lately of the Windy City, and had built much of his career there, he was at heart a Mokena man. 

 

   Born in the summer of 1868, Richard Hensel’s first years were spent in Chicago, where his German-born father was a cigar manufacturer. The elder Hensel built a livelihood there, until his workshop was reduced to ash and rubble after the great fire of 1871. Thus, in the aftermath of this disaster, the lad’s boyhood was spent in Mokena, the home of his mother. He went to school in the stately house of education that stood on the northwest corner of Front Street and today’s Schoolhouse Road, and as a youth worked not only as a clerk in a village store, but also for a period in the Baumgartner creamery in Frankfort, whose brick eminence stood for over a century on Route 45. As he struck out on his own, Dick Hensel went back to Chicago to pursue his calling as a pharmacist. After learning the tricks of the trade, all paths led back to Mokena, his old home.   

                                                                    

   In March 1896, Hensel rented what was then known as the Blaeser property on the northeast corner of Front and Mokena Streets, spruced it up a touch, and moved his drug store there. For a spell the post office was also located here, and while running his shop in this spot, he took up the mantle of correspondent for the Joliet News, sending in our town’s current events to the paper in the county seat. 

 

  In 1892 Hensel married Emma Cappel, the daughter of a well-known Mokena family. Together they brought five children into the world, one of which, Carrie Louise, or known to her friends as Dolly, would serve as the village’s telephone operator for a period. Emma Hensel departed this life in the winter of 1908, shortly before her 40^th birthday, after which Dick took Anna Gunzburger as his wife.

 

   After spending no small amount of time in Mokena, the Hensels packed up home and hearth to Chicago yet again, where Dick kept a pharmacy for years at 48^th and Lake Streets in the city. This geographic hopscotch continued; for reasons long since swept away by time, Hensel left this venture and made his way back to our gates in the 1920s, this time for good. After conducting a drug store in the old Sutter place four doors to the west for two years, Dick Hensel moved into the historic Zumstein property in October 1925. His business had been booming, and soon enough, the old shop was bursting at the seams. Hensel fixed up the Zumstein building to quite a degree after acquiring it, and even added a new concrete porch in front of it.

 

   Dick Hensel sold a wide variety of medicine in his day, and even was known to make his own, including a cough remedy that had a strong licorice flavor, containing also what was likely to be a splash of whiskey. One Mokenian even told this author that “You haven’t lived until you tried it.” Aside from being a place where prescriptions were filled, gifts of a nearly countless variety could be had at Hensel’s pharmacy, such as shaving cups and brushes, photo albums, playing cards and toys. Village residents could count on the store for candy, cigars, and school supplies as well. Chicago newspapers were also in stock, as were a full line of magazines, which was something not found in town before the pharmacy started carrying them. One could also drop off film which was then sent to Kodak for developing.    

 

   A grim incident in the daily life of this location is remembered in the ghastly robbery that took place here on March 14^th, 1938. At around eight o’clock that evening, three strangers walked into the drug store brandishing a sawed-off shotgun and an automatic pistol, when of the would-be criminals announced “This is a stickup. Get in there!” Whereupon Dick Hensel was forced into the building’s adjoining living quarters. Anna Hensel heard the hubbub and upon coming to check it out, she was also whisked into the room. The Hensels were hogtied on the floor, and a nearby phone was ripped from its connection in the wall. Dick Hensel was brutally kicked a few times, with an account of the incident from later that week saying that “the holdups were very abusive and used profane and dirty language.”

   One of the men guarded the bound Hensels, while the other two tore apart the shop, taking $35 in cash and about $225 in merchandise, coming out to a loss in today’s money of a little over $5,000. At one point one of the hoodlums demanded jewelry from the pharmacist, and when offered his masonic ring, the robber cryptically replied “No, brother, we don’t want that.” The trio took their time in the store, spending nearly an hour pilfering and ransacking. During the course of their work, Mokenian Karl Kraus walked into the store, at which point he also found himself at gunpoint and bound with tape, just like his fellow townfolk. Before the bandits were done with him, they took $11 in cash off his person. 

    Eventually the criminals left, not before taking the key to the front door with them. Anna Hensel’s hands were tied in front of her, and after wiggling for about twenty minutes, was able to untie her husband, who in turn freed her and Karl Kraus, thus ending their harrowing experience. 

 

   In his decades of business at the old stand, Dick Hensel earned his place as an anchor of Front Street. Described as friendly and grandfatherly, he is nevertheless remembered by some Mokenians for his occasionally less-than-sunny disposition. In theory the pharmacy had a full-service soda fountain, but upon placing an order, more than one village youth was snippily told to go to Gus Braun’s shop down the street, as Hensel felt he had more pressing items to occupy himself with. Ironically, Gus could be just as grouchy. 

   Nevertheless, Hensel was entitled to the odd bad day as much as we all are. He gave Mokena years of service, manning a post as village trustee from 1929 to 1934, as well as that of school director and justice of the peace. Dick Hensel finally put away his mortar and pestle in the first days of January 1947, after having been hard at work in the pharmacist’s field for over 50 years, a substantial piece of which was spent in our community. Our erstwhile village newspaper, the News-Bulletin, carried the news of his retirement on the front page of its January 10^th edition, noting that “We are sorry to have the Hensels go out of business, but after the many years in which Mr. Hensel has conducted a drug store, we feel it is a fine thing that (he) can retire and take life easy.” The shop was sold to Earl Krisam of Chicago, who opened a general merchandise store. 

 

   Dick Hensel crossed the great beyond on June 19^th, 1951. Fifteen years after his passing, another pharmacist, Daniel Kurber acquired the historic old building and had it razed to build a new drug store, which opened in 1966. The time-honored building may have been gone, but the Kurbers thrived in this spot for decades, just as the Hensels did. 

 

   The Zumstein and Hensel families left their mark on a village that hasn’t forgotten them. Even though their physical walls are long gone, a lifetime of memories remain in their place. They earned their places in the pantheon of Front Street. 

Guarding the Rails: Mokena's Railroad Flagmen

   As we Mokenians know, the roots of our village lie not just in agriculture, but also in the steel rail. The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad is the reason for the village’s very existence, and reflections on our collective past are filled with locomotives puffing soot. One image often overlooked in our minds’ eye is that of the humble wooden shack on the north side of the Mokena Street crossing. Aesthetically speaking, the little shanty was totally unremarkable, however it was from here that a generation of men worked a very important job. Known as flagmen for their tools of the trade, it was the responsibility of these Mokenians to assure safety at the railroad crossing in the days before electric gates. Working by themselves from the small hut, the flagmen were employees of the Rock Island who heralded the arrival of a train by standing in Mokena Street and waving a green flag, and later, a small stop sign.  

     While another flagman came to guard the Wolf Road crossing, the shack most widely remembered was the one that stood at the “depot crossing” on Mokena Street. Teasingly described by an early 20^th century journalist as a “mansion by the tracks”, the shanty was far from it – merely a small wooden building, roughly the size of a tollbooth, complete with a stove and at least two small windows. The exact date of its construction has long since been lost to time, but sagely residents of Mokena would remember the shack first appearing as a response to a deadly accident that occurred around 1900. Comparing these memories with the historical record, it appears likely that the calamity recalled was the death Irma Reese in 1896. A teenage relative of the McGovney family, she was killed by a rushing train for the simple yet tragic reason that she didn’t look both ways while crossing the tracks. 

 

    In the immediate aftermath of the accident, the village board asked the Rock Island to “place a flagman at Mokena Street on or before June 15^th, 1896.” Records indicate that a crossing guard had indeed been stationed at the crossing, but some unknown hiccup occurred that resulted in the railroad doing away with the flagman just as quickly as he had been posted. Recognizing the gravity of the situation, certain townsfolk unleashed a torrent of criticism on village trustees, who they perceived to be responsible for the guard’s absence. The buck was passed to the general manager of the Rock Island Railroad, and while he refused to have a flagman placed on Mokena Street, did compromise by suggesting that the local station helper perform the task. At a special meeting later that summer, Village Clerk John Liess drafted an indignant letter back to the company, wherein he described that this would be asking the impossible, for the overtaxed gent’s responsibilities already included “having to load and unload baggage, carry the mail bags to and from the post office” and “attending to the loading of milk and unloading of milk cans.”

 

    Regardless of when a flagman was permanently posted to the crossing and when his shelter was constructed, Mokena’s train passengers knew it as a place to chew the fat or find solace within its walls on cold winter mornings. Among the earliest Mokenians to work the flagman’s shack upon its installation were Patrick Brennan and Thomas Kiniry, both having settled in the village years before during its infancy.

 

     By 1909, Ferdinand Tonn was on regular duty there. A middle-aged man of German birth, Tonn waved a green flag, and was praised that year by the Joliet Weekly News as having great “artistic tastes and talents” when he spelled the village’s name in whitewashed brick and stone in the ground at the guardhouse. Not too long after this creation appeared, the status of Tonn’s shack as a hangout was threatened. The roadmaster of the Rock Island appeared in town to personally warn him not to allow people to gather there, and made it clear that any such huddlings were viewed as distractions from his duty. Apparently the order had no effect, for soon thereafter another was passed down, this one specifically mandating “no loafing”. 

 

Looking northwest toward Front Street, local flagman Ferdinand Tonn is seen here at his post on Mokena Street, circa 1915. (Image courtesy Richard Quinn)

 

     Ferdinand Tonn retired from his service at the crossing in 1922, at the lofty age of 70. At some point thereafter, Front Street resident and former butcher Paul Rinke Sr. took the helm, but it is unclear when and for how long.  Sometime around 1931, Harry Schoen succeeded Rinke as the Mokena Street flagman, who then manned the post for about thirteen years. Called “Slim” by folks around town, Schoen was a baseball fan whose radio carried the sounds of games down Front Street. One dramatic incident highlights Slim Schoen’s time as flagman, namely the bravery he displayed saving the lives of two local women in 1941. Only days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the two ladies were disembarking from an eastbound train, when one of them took an unfortunate tumble. With a westbound locomotive barreling down on them from the other track, Schoen sprung into action and halted the departing eastbound, whereupon he then pressed the two ladies and himself flush against the side of a coach while the westbound sped past, a foot and a half from their faces. Miraculously, no one was hurt, although a local news report mentioned that they all “suffered greatly from excitement and shock.” 

 

A leisurely day at the "mansion by the tracks" around 1915. (Image courtesy Richard Quinn)

 

     While initially delayed by World War II, electric gates were first installed at the Mokena Street and Wolf Road crossings in the fall of 1944. Flagmen in the village were now made obsolete, and Slim Schoen was sent to Joliet to work on a crossing there. With no use for the flagmen’s shanty, the old haunt was sold privately and moved to the new Sunny Acres subdivision just north of town where it was converted into a shed. Noting the demise of the hut, Mokena’s News-Bulletin invoked its status in the village by referring to it as an “old landmark.” From here, it faded into the pages of history. While an era ended, the stories of the unique men who waved the flag here have forever been sealed into Mokena’s story.