There stands on Front Street a building that blends so well into the streetscape that one who didn’t already know its face would easily miss it. Tucked into a street where 19th century edifices aren’t out of place, this is one that retains the same honor, although it is not readily identifiable as a historic structure. An untrained eye would miss that this house belongs to a type of construction from a bygone age, a type of building that saw widespread use in our neck of the woods in the days before 1900. All the hallmarks of antiquity have been erased from 10931 Front Street by aggressive renovations over the years. A small, one-story wing on the west side is still visible, as is another substantial two-story extension on the eastern side, in what at some point was a considerable addition or possibly a house moved from some other long forgotten place. Be that as it may, this is a locale veritably steeped in local flair, even if the overall narrative is hazy at times.
10931 Front Street as it appears today.
Our story starts in the far-off mid 19th century with Swiss born Benedicht Baumgartner, the youngest son in a family of time-honored Frankfort Township pioneers. Originally hailing from the small rural village of Rapperswil in the northwestern slice of their homeland, the Baumgartner clan settled in our midst in 1851 when Benedicht was a fresh-faced lad of 18 years old. Their arrival was sandwiched between two fortuitous events: the 1850 establishment of Frankfort Township, and the 1852 arrival of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad and the subsequent birth of Mokena. While his brothers carved out farms of their own from their father’s acreage between our village and Frankfort Station, as it was called in their time, and two of his sisters comfortably married into the Geuther and Marti familes, Benedicht Baumgartner took Charlotte Maue as his wife in 1857 and made a go of it in Mokena.
In the spring of 1858, the Baumgartners spent fifty dollars on a vacant lot on Front Street, which had heretofore been the property of Cyrus P. and Abigail Cross. Living in little more than a small railroad hamlet at this time, Baumgartner became one of our first businessmen, and was prosperous enough that by 1859, an early Will County directory called him a purveyor of dry goods. At the end of the day, he wasn’t long for this spot, as he divested of it to fellow Mokenian Philip Reitz shortly after Christmas 1860. The Baumgartners came out of the transaction over a thousand dollars richer, with the legal paperwork of the dealing stating that the sale including the building on the lot, as well as the goods in the store therein. As the value of the property had dramatically increased in those two years since its last sale, it is likely that Baumgartner had constructed the building that stood there. Whether this is the house that currently stands at 10931 Front Street, or maybe even part of it, is indeed possible, but nevertheless impossible to say through the mists of time. As for Benedicht Baumgartner, he eventually went to our sister village of Frankfort Station and became a successful capitalist there.
As the Front Street property transferred to him at the end of 1860, Philip Reitz was about 30 years old, having made his way to us via the German grand duchy of Hessen-Darmstadt sometime in the previous decade. He was a married man and a father, but nevertheless, history hasn’t blessed us with an abundance of detail on his life and what he did in Mokena. His life was not without tragedy, as he lost his infant son Friedrich shortly before he came into possession of the property in question. The 2-year-old’s small, cracked, German language gravestone is still visible in Wolf Road’s Pioneer Cemetery. Like his predecessor in this spot, Philip Reitz was a storekeeper, in 1873 carrying such items as boots, shoes, hats and caps, as well as dry goods and ready-made clothing. The Reitz family ultimately moved to the Garden City with his family by 1880, where patriarch Philip became an insurance agent.
An advertisement of Philip Reitz's that appeared in an 1873 directory of Will County.
Upon Philip Reitz’s departure from our gates, the domicile came into the hands of perennial Mokenian Martin Krapp, who had given a mortgage on the place to Reitz sometime before the spring of 1877. A butcher and livestock shipper, it’s not clear what exactly Krapp did with the place; in any case he decided to unload it, and took out a For Sale ad in the summer of 1879 in the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, the foremost German language newspaper in the American Midwest, describing it in his mother tongue as “a nicely done-up country store along with living space, stabling, etc, a nicely situated place in Mokena.” The property was on the market for a while, but two takers on the offer were brothers Christian and Daniel Knapp, who ultimately opened their wallets to the tune of $1,700 for the premises.
While lately in the store business in neighboring Spencer, the twosome’s heritage was among us in Frankfort Township, with the Bavarian Knapp family being early members of the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church in Mokena. Our property in question would remain in the ownership of this family for well over forty years, although details of that timeframe remain murky. Decades later, it would be remembered that Christian Knapp kept a paint shop here, and sometimes painted wagons. On August 29th, 1908, a particularly nasty fire broke out, and had it not been for the bucket brigade that quickly sprung up, the results would’ve been calamitous. Some tall weeds along the Rock Island right of way immediately south of the building had caught fire, possibly from an ember spat out of a passing locomotive’s funnel, and before long, the flames found their way into the building proper through a crack in its siding. Bill Semmler, Mokena’s correspondent to the Joliet Weekly News described the place as being “dry as tinder”, and within minutes, a “fierce fire was raging between the walls.” As all of this was happening, Carl Knapp, Christian’s 90-year-old father, was helplessly bedridden in the house, and was carried to a neighbor’s across the street by rescuers. Eventually the flames were tamped down, while not before “the building was damaged to quite an extent.”
All in all, the old place was fixed back up, and during the years of the First World War, a new era of history was ushered in when Louis and Minnie Wishnick began renting the property. History has not been kind to the memory of the Wishnicks, with precious few details about them having survived the ravages of time. What is known, is that they were Russians of Jewish faith, and that they had at least one son, Robert Isador. The Wishnicks sold odds and ends like rugs, felt boots, raincoats, sheepskin coats, mackinaws and fleece-lined wool underwear. Mr. Wishnick shipped in carloads of potatoes and apples over the Rock Island, and was also known to buy hides and pelts from trappers, as well as scrap iron during the war years. Aside from this, he also ventured into the country in a horse-drawn covered wagon selling knickknacks. They ultimately closed up shop shortly after New Year 1919.
In the bright years after the First World War, a new set of long-time residents came into our midst via the county seat, bringing in not only a new business, but a new wage of prosperity. Enter the Muehler years. The story starts with Martin Bruno Muehler, who was 36 years old when he came to Mokena in the spring of 1923. Born in the German kingdom of Saxony, Muehler received schooling in his homeland and later spent time working on a farm there and as a coal miner before doing a two-year stint in the German army. He and his wife Emilie made their way to American pastures in 1911 and came to Joliet where Martin worked for an industrial baker. So it was that destiny brought them to us in Mokena, where they opened a meat market in the old building in question. Reachable under the phone number W6, the shop not only boasted a stamped tin ceiling and sawdust on the floor, the very image of an old-time meat purveyor’s, but was also highly regarded, a contemporary remarking that Martin Muehler “handles high grade merchandise exclusively and has an excellent trade.”
The Muehler Meat Market complete with a 1939 Ford. (Image courtesy of Pam Schonwise)
Martin and Emilie Muehler were the parents of six children, namely Max, Richard, Hertha, Walter, Bill and Bernice, all of whom will be remembered by Mokenians of a certain age. Tragically, Emilie Muehler passed away in 1925, and five years later, Martin took fellow German native Wilhelmina Mueller as his wife. Wilhelmina was the mother of three children from her first marriage, to wit Gretel, (called Cray in Mokena), Hans and Ludwig, who everyone knew as Schatz, or German for “sweetheart.” So it was, that for a time in the 20th century, Mokena teemed with Muehlers and Muellers, and is still host to their kin to this day.
Left to right: Hans Mueller, Wilhelmina Muehler and Martin Muehler of Mokena. (Image courtesy of Pam Schonwise)
Along in 1926, Martin Muehler bought the old Wishnick place where he kept his meat market, and the property passed into his ownership. He made various improvements to the place, such as putting on a new roof and inserting a new foundation under the building, which by this time was already a historic landmark in town. Thirteen years later, the Muehlers clad the structure in asbestos shingle siding, a practice not uncommon in its day.
The Muehler meat market weathered the dark years of the Great Depression, only for the business to sink during the trying days of the Second World War. Rationing of everyday items was in full swing, and meat didn’t escape the net. Martin Muehler couldn’t get a big enough supply to keep the shop afloat, and he closed his doors for the last time in the spring of 1943. After this setback, the Muehler family stayed in Mokena, and their patriarch became a driver for a Tinley Park bakery. The Muehlers retained ownership of their property in town until Martin and Wilhelmina perished in a tragic car accident in the county seat in 1948. Shortly thereafter, their household and Mr. Muehler’s tools of the trade were auctioned off, such as a meat block, a Toledo scale, and meat saws, cleavers and knives.
In the aftermath of the Muehler years, a new enterprise called this historic location home. In the summer of 1955, Willard Munch came onto the scene and opened a business here that embodied the prosperous era in which it was born. Bearing the address of 221 Front Street in those days, the new concern handled washing machines, driers, ranges, refrigerators, TVs, simply any kind of appliance that a modern household would need in the postwar age. Munch was an electrician by trade, and christening the new business Mokena Electric, he also carried all sorts of supplies such as wires, cables, sockets and fuses. Mr. Munch also had a position of leadership in our village, serving as a village trustee from 1955 to 1963. While the business has long since left Mokena, it still exists to this day as Munch Supply, a major nationwide player in the heating and cooling industry.
With the passage of time, the place was converted into a residential property, and so it remains to this day, still a fixture on Front Street after more than a century and a half. Countless Mokenians have passed through this historic building over the decades, many of whom have played an integral role in our community’s narrative. This old structure has seen many changes over the years, and with any luck, it will keep doing so for another 150 years.
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