A community draws strength in the gathering of its citizens. They come together in settings where ideas are shared, grand plans hatched, and friendships are sealed. Groups of neighbors need a spot where they are comfortable, yet one that is in the heart of the place they call home. The untimely loss of such an important landmark can leave a neighborhood reeling, such as the one Mokena experienced 110 years ago in the great fire that destroyed Martin Hall on Front Street.
In the spirit of American entrepreneurship, Mokenian Frank Liess opened a general store on Front Street in May 1901. His brother Charles later joined him in partnership, and while they weren’t the only shopkeepers in town, they served a Mokena where around 300 souls lived and joined a smattering of enterprises such as a blacksmith and a butcher, along with a drugstore and some saloons. Three years after the store opened, the building was spruced up with an addition, and the second floor of the structure was remade into a large multi-purpose space, which quickly came to be known throughout the region as Liess Hall.
Sporting a roomy dance floor, the space also had a ticket office, cloakroom, and its own entrance from Front Street. It was a popular gathering spot for Mokena’s fraternal orders; everyone from the Modern Woodmen of America to the Royal Neighbors called Liess Hall home. Not only did the village board convene in the hall for a period, it was also a focal point of social activity in the community. Any given week in early 20thcentury Mokena might find a masquerade ball, play, church bazaar or even a magic lantern show taking place – the latter being the forerunner to today’s movies.
The hall, along with the store on its street level, passed into the hands of the unfortunately named Lemuel Cramp in 1911, and the following year became the property of John A. Martin, a recent Mokena arrival by way of downstate Jefferson County. The countless hours of joy that took place within these walls were overshadowed by disaster, when a catastrophic fire struck the hall on July 24th, 1912.
From a standpoint at her residence across the street and a few yards to the southeast, widowed mother Bertha Groth was jarred from her slumbers by the acrid smell of smoke, and when she looked out her bedroom window at about 2:30am, she spotted Martin Hall aflame, likely being the first Mokenian to see it, saying that she saw “flames breaking through the walls and roof of the Martin building.” She hurried across to the street to the saloon of her brother-in-law, John Groth, to notify him of the impending calamity. Word traveled over electric wire in the dark night to 20-year-old village switchboard operator Mary Rinke, who became a pioneer when she used her telephone to alert her fellow townspeople of the emergency unfolding on Front Street. Later that day, it was said that Mary managed to call everyone in town.
Around the same time as Bertha Groth made her dreadful discovery, a tinsmith neighbor of hers named Henry Carsten caught sight of a flame through a first floor window of the building. He told a local newspaper that the light was “not larger than a lantern”, before it suddenly exploded before his eyes.
As townspeople and the volunteer fire department rushed to the scene, it became abundantly clear that it was too late to save Martin Hall. As the inferno wrapped itself around the building, the threat of half the town burning with it became very real. Flaming pieces of debris landed on the general store of Catharine Sippel next door to the west, on Charles Moriarty’s feed shed across Front Street, and on the home of Ernest Lehnert, a few doors down the road. Blistering flames also licked 30-year-old Ed Stellwagen, who armed with buckets of water, fought to protect his property on the east side of the blaze. His roof having caught on fire a few times, the day proved to be exceedingly unlucky for him. While he ultimately saved his buildings, they did take damage not only from the flames but also from water, and he carried no insurance. To add insult to injury, he complained that someone took $50 from his vest that was tossed aside while fighting the fire.
Despite the efforts of Mokena’s citizens, Martin Hall couldn’t be saved, and was consigned to a heap of charred wood. John Martin estimated the total loss came out to about $15,000. The members of local organizations who met in the hall discovered that their charters were lost in the blaze, and while a safe was fished out of the wreckage that managed to keep some of their valuable papers intact, some time had to pass before it was cool enough to open. Within a few days, State Deputy Fire Marshal L.C. McMurtry made the trek to town to investigate the scene, where he turned up nothing useful. If anyone ever found a definite answer as to what caused the conflagration, it was never recorded for posterity. Conflicting stories on the fire’s origin made their rounds in Mokena, some of which were tinged with raised eyebrows and suspicion. Local sage Clinton Kraus later cryptically reflected that “none could be proven…best to forget!”
Within days of the fire, the Joliet Herald reported that a collection was being taken up in town to help repair Ed Stellwagen’s property. Meanwhile, Mr. Martin claimed that he would rebuild his hall once odds and ends with his insurance were settled, and that this time, the place would be fireproof. Alas, it never happened, and he left town. The old focal point of the village, where so many memories were made, stood at the site of today’s Avalanche Jewelry at 11018 Front Street. Perhaps not coincidentally, a new and improved hall was built on the site around a year after the blaze, a building which itself was taken by another disastrous fire in 1993. As it seems, irony plays no favorites.
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