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. 

Unwanted Visitor: The Cruel Case of George and Emma Klose

   It’s the story of a Mokena family. An elderly brother and sister who should’ve been living out days of peace in the sunset of their lives, when they were visited by a heinous crime, one that garnered headlines around Will County. The long timeline of our village’s history is flecked with dots of unsavoriness, which can be found if one pulls back the covers and knows just where to look. On the record of the years is the deadly 1864 riot, the 1926 murder of sheriff’s deputy Walter Fisher, and even the robbery of the Mokena post office in 1937. One that might very well join this nefarious list is the Emma and George Klose case of 1962. 

   The family at the heart of this event, the Kloses, were an old one, one that stood for all that was upright. They were rugged, hardworking farm folk; sons and daughters of the soil, who were a vital part of the social fabric of old Mokena. Patriarch Louis Klose first showed up as a middle-aged man within the borders of Frankfort Township by way of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Ours was a neighborhood were many of his fellow countrymen had already made their home, and while history has kept from us the exact date in which he first set foot here, all indications are that it occurred in the 1850s, roughly congruent with the time Mokena was born in 1852. At some point between his arrival in our neck of the woods and 1860, Louis Klose carved out a home for himself on a tract of land bisected by the new Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad in the northern reaches of the township, at a place that years later was known as the southwestern corner of Route 45 and 187^th Street. 

 

   Over the years, while in the hands of subsequent generations of the Klose family, this quaint farm established by their forebear would come to encompass over 127 acres. As history would have it, by and by the geographical region in which the Klose estate found itself came to be called Summit Hill, in reference to its elevation relative to the rest of the township. In time, the large farm came into the hands of Louis Klose’s son John, who married Philipena Mast in 1871, the daughter of another long-established family. Like his father, John was a native of Bavaria, where he was born in 1850. The young Klose was brought to our environs as a four-year-old by his uncle Johann Zahn, who eventually would become an innkeeper in Mokena and no small figure in our burg’s narrative. 

 

   On his property northeast of the village, John Klose became successful raising livestock and running a dairy farm. He was an active Republican, served as a school director and was a member of St. John’s German Evangelical Church. He had a passion for horticulture, and transformed his farm into one of the most lush places in the Mokena area. He was called a “well-known, highly esteemed citizen of Frankfort Township”, while years after he passed in 1918, it would be said that “Mr. Klose had many friends in this part of the state who have the kindest recollections of him.”

 

   Any recounting of this pioneer family would be remiss not to detail the children of John and Philipena Klose. Their eldest was George, born in 1872, who never married and stayed on the family homestead. Next came Oscar in 1873, who moved to town around the turn of the 20^th century and became our village constable, sporting a dashing uniform and patrolling the streets in the early 1900s. John Philip came onto the scene in 1875, he later married and ran a 100-acre farm of his own a little east of the old Klose place. Emma rounded them out in 1881. Like her brother George, she never married, and spent her days on the homestead with him. Emma Klose was possessed of a gift for music, and sealed her place in immortality by writing and publishing her magnum opus, the jaunty Mokena March and Two Step in 1910.

The Klose farm as it appeared in 1955. Route 45 can be seen in the right foreground, with 187th Street at the top of the image. Today this piece of land is the site of Thunder Bowl on Old LaGrange Road. 

 

   The apple didn’t fall far from John Klose’s tree with his children George and Emma, who inherited his love of plants and trees. They kept up the work he started, and in 1928 alone, George planted 50 evergreens on the property, while Emma was said to “devote many hours to her large garden of flowers and plants.” While the brother and sister lived pastoral lives, they were no strangers to crime. In 1914, a horse, buggy and double set of harnesses were brazenly stolen from their brother John Philip Klose farm, just a stone’s throw from theirs. All in all though, things were generally peaceful in their patch of Midwestern earth. The idyll was shattered on July 12^th, 1962.

 

   On that terrifying, early Thursday morning, George Klose had already reached a respectable 90 years, while his younger sister Emma, was 81. The Route 45 the Kloses lived on in 1962 would be one completely unrecognizable to modern eyes. What is today a bustling suburban thoroughfare, was then a narrow road totally rural in character, rich in agricultural surroundings. Thick foliage in front of the Klose farmhouse shielded it to most passersby, which to the elderly siblings was a nice buffer from the outside world, but gave an upper hand to anyone with barbarity in his heart. 

 

   The first eerie red flag went up around 10 o’clock on Wednesday night, July 11^th. A rap was heard on the Kloses’ door, and when Emma answered it, she beheld a stranger in the rain, who asked to come inside and out of the elements. Rightly spooked by the man, she refused to let him in. The episode appeared to be over, until brother and sister awoke sometime around 2:00 the next morning in great shock, when they found the same man in their living room. He was rather short; they estimated he must have been about five feet, three inches tall, who wore a long white coat that hid his body type. He was young too, looking to be in his 20s, with a round face.

 

   He preceded to squirt a bulb syringe in Emma’s face, dousing her with ammonia. She defended herself by knocking the device out of the intruder’s hand, to which he responded by punching the elderly lady in the face. The same treatment was dealt out to George, who was knocked down and suffered a fractured jaw in the attack. The intruder demanded to know where the money was from the farm’s sale. He was slow on getting the news though – the farm had been sold ten years before, and the money gained from the sale had long since been invested. Even as the two protested there was no cash around, the burglar refused to take them at their word, and tied them to a pair of chairs. 

 

   The stranger began torturing George Klose, “twisting and bending” his fingers back, until in desperation, the elderly man admitted that there was some cash in an upstairs safe. The thief found the small, antique contraption and threw it down the stairs in an attempt to break it open. That having failed, he was able to find the key and make off with the money inside, about $400, which in today’s figures would equal roughly $3,700. Adding insult to, quite literally, injury, he took the keys for a car sometimes driven by Emma and left the house. Here he encountered a hitch, for when he drove out of the yard, the back wheels sunk themselves into a hole, and try as he may, the car wouldn’t budge. The brutal bandit took off on foot, disappearing into the night. 

 

   The trouble had only just begun for George and Emma. They were left tied up, and after hours of struggling, Emma got free at around 6 o’clock in the morning. After untying her brother, she made the horrifying discovery that their phone line had also been cut. The 81-year-old, after having been roughed up and bound for hours, was forced in the early morning dew to walk to the home of Paul Smith. The only problem was, that Smith was on the same party line as the Kloses, so his phone was also out. He drove into Frankfort to the intersection of Routes 30 and 45, where he called the sheriff’s department, as well as a doctor and ambulance from a service station. 

 

   The shocking brutality of this episode was front page news in Mokena’s News-Bulletin, and was also written up in the county seat’s Herald-News, with both papers screaming the news from their front pages. Investigators from the sheriff’s office said the would-be yegg had gained entrance to the farmhouse by breaking the front door. As to the suspect himself, lawmen were tight-lipped to the press, cryptically noting only that the physical description given to them by the elderly brother and sister matched an individual from the neighborhood who had recently gone missing. Whoever he was, he was familiar not only with the layout of the farm and its surroundings, but also with the fact that the Kloses kept a dozen dogs on the place, and knew that they were not to be feared. 

 

   George and Emma were taken to St. James Hospital in Chicago Heights, where staff kept press photographers away from them. As far as the historical record states, no justice was ever served in this case. George Klose lived for a further five years after the brutal attack, reaching the impressive age of 95 before he passed in 1967, when he was joined by his sister Emma two years later. Both came to repose in their family plot at St. John’s Cemetery in Mokena, a burial ground that their family had been using for 100 years by this point. The last vestige of the Klose farm, its huge dairy barn, disappeared in the early 1980s. Let us remember Emma and George Klose not for the abhorrent act endured by them in 1962, but instead for the fact that they were a peaceful Mokena family, one who tilled the soil, as did their parents and grandparents at the same spot. They helped feed America, and turned their own corner of our community into one of its most beautiful places. 

Down on the Corner

   It can be called the Times Square of Mokena. The intersection of Front and Mokena Streets is a place where countless town gatherings have been held; everyone’s been there, countless village residents pass through the intersection daily, and indeed, during the much-vaunted Christmas Fest parade, the crowd is thickest here. In the not-too-distant past, moveable letters would even be hung between opposite telephone poles here heralding the coming of big events in the village’s social calendar. Being such a prominent place in our community, it is naturally the site of no small amount of local history. A passerby’s attention is easily drawn to the old two-story Italianate house on the northeast side of the crossing, the old Blaeser building, indeed it’s been covered in depth on this page. Nevertheless, looking across the street to the southeast corner, we have another place that is rich in history. 

Steeped in local flavor, the southeast corner of Front and Mokena Streets has decades of local lore attached to it. 

   Cutting through the fog of ages, it can be seen that this corner has been part of the village since its earliest days, being charted as part of founding father Allen Denny’s first addition to Mokena in the first years of the 1850s. This lot, along with the few adjoining to the east, were spoken for at an early date by James Ducker, an Englishman who in 1853 established a general store in Mokena, it proudly counting itself as one of the first business enterprises in our newly born town. He came to prosper in our midst, and even though he moved his business to Joliet in 1874, the Ducker family still retained ownership of this property until just after the turn of the twentieth century. 

 

   Emerging through the blur of the past, a young man named Herman Jacobus is the first known entrepreneur to run a business on this corner. The earliest blip on the historic radar is an advertisement bearing the date September 4^th, 1875 that appeared in an issue of the Mokena Advertiser that announced his opening a meat market here. The purveyor of “a general assortment of fresh and salt meats”, another insert from Jacobus appeared nearly a year later in the August 1^st, 1876 issue of the same paper that further elaborated on his business, it talking of “smoked ham, bacon and summer sausage” while also promising cash paid for hides and tallow. 

 

An 1875 advertisement from Herman Jacobus,

 

  Before opening his doors here, the Prussian-born Herman Jacobus married Julia Scheer, a member of a well-known local family, in November 1873 at the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church, with whom he came to raise a family. Business hummed along here for Jacobus, and he found himself cited by the incipient Mokena Board of Health in the summer of 1883 for having excessive manure adjoining the hog pen near his slaughterhouse. Time has given us precious few details about life on this corner during Herman Jacobus’ tenure, and all signs indicate that he and his family packed up and left town at some juncture. 

 

   Painting a vivid picture of 19^th century existence in Mokena is fraught with hurdles due to a lack of comprehensive records and thorough journalistic coverage, and as such the hazy early half of the history of this corner has left us with a mostly empty void until April 25^th, 1892, when a disastrous fire, the scourge of our forefathers, struck the site. At the time, the building on the property housed the meat market of a Mr. Kennedy, and in reporting the blaze, the Joliet Weekly News bluntly stated that the fire was a “really bad thing for the village.” Having started between 3:00 and 4:00am, the conflagration began in the one-story property on the corner, and not only was it totally destroyed, but the flames jumped to a two-story frame building to the east, gutting it as well. The News described how “the whole town was quickly aroused” and that Mokena’s hand engine and a bucket brigade valiantly fought the fires and were able to save the rest of the village. 

   No one ever got to the bottom of what caused the fire, as was so often the case in those days, but most town folk figured it must have been the work of an ember from the funnel of a coal-fed locomotive. The loss of both buildings was heavy, and both were considered old landmarks at the time. The now vacant corner lot became something of a headache to the village dads, who in December 1894 notified Jeannette Ducker at her Joliet home that the hole where the building stood needed to be filled in, or at least fenced off. 

 

   The turn of the 20^th century is remembered as a dark time in the annals of Mokena’s past. Various economical factors, such as the calamitous Panic of 1893, the worst financial crisis in our country’s history up to that point, had caused an exodus of local businesses and people, with a meager 281 residents being counted within the village gates in 1900. A rebound slowly took hold, beginning first in 1907 with the construction of Bowman Dairy’s milk bottling plant on today’s Wolf Road, along with the opening of Mokena State Bank two years later. An integral part of this bounce back was Dr. John J. Coady, who overturned a new leaf in the life of this corner in March 1911, when he had a cozy one-story building constructed on it. Measuring in at 16 by 32 feet, it contained the doctor’s office and a drug store. 

 

Looking southwest around 1909, this view shows the corner of Front and Mokena Streets shortly before Dr. Coady built his practice and drug store here. 

 

   A 37-year-old physician late of Iowa, Dr. Coady studied medicine at the Chicago College of Physicians and Surgeons, and upon his graduation in 1907, settled in Mokena. He was a medicine man of the old school, and made house calls to his patients by horse and buggy, which he often rented from the livery stable of Henry Stellwagen, further up Front Street. A reminiscence written years later said that “snowstorms, rain or blazing heat did not stop Dr. Coady when the sick needed his aid.” In the days after New Years 1910, he was so busy with measles cases that he couldn’t even stop to eat. 

 

   Dr. John J. Coady married Mokena girl Mildred Brinckerhoff in April 1908, and after having endeared himself to the rest of the town, the Coadys moved to Minooka in 1912, leaving behind the little building on the corner as their legacy. Before leaving our community, Dr. Coady opened an ice cream parlor in the drug store, which in time would come to be a popular meeting place for the players of Mokena’s crack baseball team. Before the doctor left town for good, he disposed of his practice and the drug store to another physician, Dr. Frank W. Searles of New Lenox. Even though Dr. Searles sold the building itself to Mokena State Bank cashier Frank Liess and local auctioneer Charles Moriarty in the spring of 1912, he kept up the pharmacy business here. It was by all means a modern one, as the physician had the place wired for electricity within a year, and had the honor of having a 240-watt lamp on the premises, which at the time, was the most powerful light fixture in town. 

 

   In the years between the world wars, this corner was home to various enterprises. One was the upholstering business of Albert Hellmuth, who counted no small part of his trade in the finishing of auto roofs, while others were a shoe repair shop by Fred Leonhardt in the 1920s, a small grocery store run by Burt Gillette, and the barber shop of Amos Bruns. In May of 1936, while hair was being cut here, John Yunker undertook some remodeling work on the building, having the place raised up and a concrete block foundation built under it, while an addition was tacked onto the structure’s east side, which was used as an apartment by the Bruns family. While all of these concerns were relatively short lived, Mr. Bruns would later establish a well-known and long-lasting restaurant in neighboring New Lenox. 

 

   After the long and rough years of the Great Depression and the Second World War, normalcy returned in 1945, and with that, another boom to Mokena. The village experienced an uptick in population, along with some new construction on Front Street. The old adage says that history repeats itself, and it did just that on the corner, for a new drug store opened in early 1946. However, before the first customer came, a new building was constructed. And thus, the modest old building from Dr. Coady’s day, at least the second to have stood at this spot, disappeared from the landscape. A local news report from November 1945 indicated that the old structure was moved slightly on the lot and incorporated into the new building, but in the same breath, Mokena’s most time-honored citizens remember the old edifice simply being torn down. 

 

   For the blink of an eye, Allan Cavett of Tinley Park kept shop in the new brick building on the corner, until Henry B. and Lillian Boleman bought the store in May 1947. Lately of Chicago, where he owned a drug store on the south side of the city, the 48-year-old Boleman was a native of Indiana and had learned his trade at Valparaiso pharmacy school. The Bolemans were perfect matches for our village, as were their daughters, Jeanne, Marilyn and Pat. The drug store on the corner was a very much a family affair, and every member had their time working there. The Bolemans resided in living quarters within the building, which housed a typical pharmacy for its time and place, which also included a soda fountain with the booths on the west side of the building. The pharmacy also boasted of a pay phone, one of only very few in Mokena in this era. Due to the drug store’s close proximity to the Rock Island tracks, it wasn’t uncommon for Mokenians to call the Bolemans to ask if a certain train had come through, but the family quickly got so used to hearing rumbling trains, so that they barely even noticed them. 

 

   After Henry Boleman’s untimely passing in May 1957, the pharmacy was still kept up by his family, with Pat Boleman bringing prescriptions to Allan Cavett in Tinley Park and then back to Mokena, all the while learning to drive along the way. The local business was sold on contract by the Bolemans to a pharmacist named William Geisler on December 1^st, 1957, however he wasn’t in business here too terribly long, as he too passed in 1959. At this point Dan Kurber came onto the scene, and paid off the rest of the contract to Lillian Boleman in February 1960. Kurber found success on the corner, before moving further west down Front Street in 1966 to a brand-new building where he (and later his son) flourished for years. 

 

  Onward the timeline marched, and the red brick building underwent another transformation, this time from drug store to restaurant. In the 1960s, Ival (known affectionately as Doc) and Ruth White opened an eatery here, who will be fondly remembered by Mokenians of a certain age. In time the building would come to house a series of watering holes, counting gents such as Marty Clegg, Mr. Speedwell and Mel Weidner as proprietors, while in years later housing bars known as The Depot and St. Anthony’s Pub. 

 

  Meanwhile, in 2002, the building on the corner received a profound facelift, in which the entire structure was gutted, a new peaked roof raised up, and the old brick walls of Boleman’s pharmacy were sandwiched in fresh clapboard siding. In a masterstroke of reuse, the old place was given a new lease on life, and continues to stand triumphant today. Time has gifted modern Mokenians with 145 years of history here, and as the tides of time pass us by, we’ll have 145 more. 

A Grave Mystery

    Who doesn’t love a good mystery? From the story of the Loch Ness Monster, to the riddle of extraterrestrial life, and even the puzzle of the Zodiac Killer’s identity, they keep us spellbound, whether they happened yesterday or over a century ago. While Jack the Ripper never prowled the streets of Mokena, this writer can do you one better, for we have a mystery in our own midst. We have to turn back the hands of time 83 years, to the summer of 1939, and set the stage at the historic Front Street office of our town’s erstwhile newspaper, the News-Bulletin.  

   That first week of August, the paper was being assembled for its publishing date of the coming Friday. Various stories were laid out for inclusion in the issue, such as taxes to be raised in Marley, a series of nasty car crashes in Tinley Park, and the loss of Mokena’s only ball field to a property transfer. One column easily bested all the others though, and it was the one on the front page labeled Here is a Deep Mystery. The family of William and Margaret Semmler, the paper’s proprietors, even used a special bold, attention-grabbing typeface for the headline that they rarely used. 

 

      On Saturday, August 5^th, 1939, Local man Harry Barenz was busy on the Semmlers’ Front Street property digging a trench for a new cellar drain. He noticed something odd when the soil turned strangely soft after he had heaved through layer after layer of dark clay. As he stood in the five-foot-deep ditch, he noticed that the soft dirt was a mysterious dark shade that matched none of the others he had seen that day. As Barenz shrugged off the change and continued his work, he struck several pieces of wood. As he worked them loose, took them in his hands and picked off caked-on soil, he could tell that they weren’t pieces of root. Heavily rotten, he realized that one of them had a handle on it. A handle exactly like the kind used on old-fashioned coffins.

     This was something Harry Barenz couldn’t shrug off.

 

The office of the News-Bulletin on Front Street, the site of the mysterious grave unearthed by Harry Barenz in 1939. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

     As a feeling crept over him that was probably a mixture of apprehension and curiosity, he kept digging, but this time a little more gingerly. Within a few minutes, he realized he was surrounded by pieces of something else. He picked up a brittle rib, some ancient pieces of leg bone, and fragments of what seemed to be a lady’s shoe, a type of antiquated square-toed shoe that hadn’t been popular since well before the turn of the twentieth century. 

 

    It became clear that in digging the trench for the new drain, Harry Barenz had happened across a grave. After also having recovered some large, rusted spikes and a few more planks, he hurriedly alerted Editor Semmler to his find. The two flabbergasted men examined the deep furrow that hugged the northwest corner of the News-Bulletin office, and seeing that there was more wood in the ditch’s wall, reasoned that Barenz had unknowingly broken into the lower side of the long-forgotten casket. Over five feet of soil sat on the rest of the coffin, and for the time being, Mr. Semmler decided not to have the rest exhumed. 

 

    The lot on which the bones were discovered in 1939 counts as one of the most historic in all of Mokena. Today the home of an apartment building at 10842 Front Street, local lore has it that a Hessian by the name of Johann Martin Heim may have built a small, two room house on that site as early as the late 1840s, predating the first plat of Mokena by several years. One of the area’s first German settlers, Heim ran a small store out of his home, and numbered the builders of the Rock Island railroad among his costumers. In 1852 he completed an addition to his home and opened a saloon. Due to the fact that Heim was Editor Semmler’s grandfather, many tales of happenings at the tavern have survived. As the Heim place became one of Mokena’s more well-known watering holes, members of the Semmler family later recalled that the building served as a hangout for Union soldiers during the grisly Civil War, and also a premiere ball location, where fiddlers serenaded boisterous parties that “ran into the wee small hours of the morning”. 

 

Pictured around 1870 in one of Mokena's oldest known images, is the saloon of Johann Martin Heim, who is visible in the doorway. This structure stood until the late 1970s, when it was removed to make way for an apartment building, which today stands at 10842 Front Street. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

     Martin Heim seems to have run his saloon on Front Street until he died of pneumonia in 1886. Editor Semmler’s father, a Prussian cobbler by the name of John Semmler, worked from the building sometime after the turn of the twentieth century, and from 1919 until well into the 1960s, the Semmler family made the historic building the headquarters of our community’s voice, The News-Bulletin. In 1977, the old place was torn down, and Mokena lost one of its most meaningful landmarks. 

 

     By the time the mysterious grave was unearthed in 1939, ownership of the property had been in the same family for nearly 100 years. In spite of this fact, not one of the Semmlers had a clue who the fragile remains could have belonged to. In a special issue of the News-Bulletin twelve years after the fact, Margaret Semmler theorized that they could have been those of an early Potawatomi inhabitant of our area. While this can’t be ruled out, the fact that the bones were originally housed in a wooden coffin, and the presence of the shoe from a recognizable, yet heavily outdated fashion makes this idea improbable, as they reflect European American burial practices of the time.

 

      The earliest pioneers of what would later become Mokena didn’t always use organized cemeteries. At least two German families in this area used family plots on their farms, and it was alleged that a few children of early settler Tilford Duncan were buried in the vicinity of today’s Woodland Circle. To this day there are undoubtedly ancient graves hidden all over what is now Mokena, their exact whereabouts and the names of those within lost forever to the ages. 

 

     Maybe the bones uncovered in 1939 on Front Street belonged to a member of the Heim family? Interestingly, a check of congregation death records from the then-named German United Evangelical St. John’s Church revealed that a 12-year-old daughter of Martin Heim named Anna Maria died of rheumatism in 1875. While the remains uncovered in 1939 seemed to be female, they did not appear to belong to a child.  

 

     The cellar drain on the Semmler place on Front Street was eventually finished. Not quite sure what to do with the bones that Harry Barenz dug up, Editor Semmler displayed them in his office. Days and weeks went by. Summer turned into fall. The bones eventually faded into history and were lost. As a born reporter, Bill Semmler asked himself the who, what, and where about who was in the inadvertently discovered grave, but he never got any good leads. 83 years later, Mokena still hasn’t gotten any closer. In the words of the News-Bulletin, it has truly stayed a “deep mystery”. 

 

     However, it shouldn’t be easily forgotten that the grave wasn’t completely removed on that day in 1939. No evidence has since come to light that it was ever was, which leaves us with one question: Is it still there? 

Stick 'Em Up: The 1924 Robbery of Mokena State Bank

    On dusty small town Front Street, the acrid smell of soot from coal-fed locomotives would have greeted a visitor to Mokena in 1924. Citizens doing business passed on the street, where every face was familiar and every personality known. The old Mokena State Bank, a beacon of stoic white Bedford stone and solid red brick, stuck out among a sea of wood frame buildings. Founded in 1909 by a group of influential Mokena businessmen, this institution came to reflect a rock of financial stability in the rural farm village. It was here on Tuesday, October 27^th 1924, that one of Mokena’s most audacious crimes was committed. 

     At 31 years of age on that autumn day, Karl Krapp was a lifelong resident of Mokena and the bank’s assistant cashier. The son of one of the bank’s founders, Krapp found himself occupied with some bookwork behind the bars of his cashier’s cage. Perched atop a high stool, in his periphery he would have been aware of two men entering the building’s front door. In the matter of seconds, a .45 Colt pistol was shoved through the bars into Krapp’s face, and a brusque voice barked “Hands up!” The young cashier laughed at what he took for a mischievous joke, not an unexpected reaction in a small town where not much of note happened. Upon seeing the rage of the armed man when his order was not complied with, and that at least one of the men had a handkerchief wrapped around his face, Krapp realized the deadly seriousness of the situation. The bank was being robbed. 

 

     Also present in the bank at this time were local blacksmith Albert Braun and his brother-in-law Harry Peterson, as well as George Hacker, who not only was the bank’s cashier, but also served as Mokena’s mayor. Having held the small building in their firm grip, the two robbers herded Braun, Peterson, and assistant cashier Krapp into a rear room, where the bandits forced them to face a wall with their hands in the air. 

     The lead thief jammed his pistol into Krapp’s side and vulgarly threatened him as cashier Hacker was forced into the bank’s vault. Karl Krapp would later recall that the criminal’s weapon “felt like a cannon” and with his senses at their highest level of awareness, he expected a shot to ring out at any second. At the vault, bundles of currency were scooped into the second thief’s burlap sack; such was the robber’s haste that a packet of bills containing $200 burst onto the floor where it was abandoned.

Mokena State Bank on a better day. Pictured here around 1910 are, left to right, bank secretary W.H. Bechstein, John Cappel, cashier Frank Liess, and president Christian Bechstein. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

    As quickly as they carried out their brazen task, the criminals bolted from the bank and into a large touring car, where three comrades awaited them, one of which was said to be armed with a shotgun. The auto disappeared as it roared westward down Front Street. The robbers’ loot equaled slightly more than $4,000, consisting of paper bills as well as gold and silver. Measured by the standards of today, the value of the heist would equal approximately $50,500.

 

    In the immediate aftermath of the robbery, Mokena and the surrounding countryside became alive with law enforcement personnel. After being notified by local telephone office manager Clida Deadmore, Will County Sheriff John Walker and deputies from Frankfort, Joliet, New Lenox, as well as Mokena took up the chase. Initially these men were unsuccessful in getting ahead of the robbers, until the tread of the getaway auto’s tires was followed in Front Street’s dust over rural roads to an abandoned farm outside New Lenox.

 

    Approaching the light brown touring car with trepidation, attending deputies found the auto to be devoid of life. Inside were discovered the empty billfolds of George Hacker and Karl Krapp, which had been snatched from them during the robbery, as was the handgun which had been employed in the attack. The thieves’ loot was nowhere to be found. Most ominously, more tire tracks along the dumped vehicle indicated that a second car escaped with the wanted men, from which all traces dissolved into oblivion. In a last attempt to nab the fugitives, two police German shepherds were used to track down the men.   While promising at the outset, the presence of farmers in the surrounding fields quickly threw dogs off the target scent. 

 

     The trail seemed cold until shortly after the robbery, when Sheriff’s Deputy Walter Fisher, a Front Street storekeeper, took George and Vernon Touzen into custody. Newcomers to Mokena and initially claiming to be brothers, Vernon supposedly had been held at gunpoint outside the bank during the raid. During questioning, he eventually confessed that his actual surname was James. Their kinship wasn’t the only part of their story to be bogus; a claim of being prohibition agents also fell apart under scrutiny.   

 

    Having made what were deemed “suspicious statements” about the robbery by our town newspaper, the News-Bulletin, James and Touzen were summarily locked up at the county jail. In their absence, authorities removed suitcases from their temporary place of residence in Mokena, inside which were found not only matching ammunition for the robbery gun, but also piquant letters from local girls. 

 

    The issue of James and Touzen intensified when it was discovered that the pair were known to be friendly with John Frisch, a Mokena railroad worker and the village’s constable. Many in town openly wondered about Frisch’s involvement in the robbery, as one of the suspected twosome had recently swapped pistols with him. So loud was the mistrust against Frisch that the Mokena Village Board was forced to investigate him until Deputy Fisher vociferously defended him, stating that James and Touzen had “pulled the wool over Frisch’s eyes as to their intentions.”

 

     As history notes, no charges were ever formally leveled against James and Touzen. There was simply no conclusive evidence, no smoking gun tying them to any involvement in the robbery of the Mokena State Bank. After their release from jail a short time later, James threatened to exact revenge on Deputy Fisher, and promptly disappeared along with Touzen into the untraceable void of time. 

 

   Mokena was a changed place after the heinous robbery, with all strangers looked upon with suspicion. An unknown face would be asked to explain his business in town, and if a satisfactory answer wasn’t becoming, would be hustled out of the village. The bank was quickly stocked with firearms, and the building itself was fortified. Within a year of the robbery, the cashier’s cage was completely surrounded with bulletproof glass, while all woodwork in the bank was backed with steel, not to mention the windows that got bullet resistant screens. The doors to the cashier’s space and the president’s office also got a treatment of steel, as well as an apparatus that allowed them only to be opened from the inside by means of an electric button. The directors of the bank weren’t about to take any chances on the supposedly bulletproof glass, and invited Deputy Fisher to give it a test. On the afternoon of Tuesday, November 24^th, 1925, the deputy fired three rounds from his .38 caliber revolver into the glass. Not a single one made it through. The News-Bulletin was there, and noted that “the only effect on the glass was a whitening of the surface, same as seen on a piece of ice when it is struck.”

 

     Mokena may never know who was behind the robbery of October 27^th, 1924. Loose ends existed that were never followed up on, and ringers for the crime were released without charge. What is sure, is that the crime resonated so deeply in the collective psyche of this sleepy railroad village of decades past, that it is still remembered with dread to this day. 

The Currency of Time: The Early Days of Mokena State Bank

   Money makes the world go ‘round. While our streets have never been paved with gold, we’ve had a tidy financial institution within our village gates for well over a century that safeguards the treasures of our town folk. Weathering safe crackings, robberies, and global financial crises, it’s still with us to this day. What merged with the State Bank of Illinois in the first decade of the 21^st century, was originally the Mokena State Bank, which found its beginning in the summer of 1909. 

   While the institution has been around for as long as any of us can remember, it is not the first bank to exist in town. 25 years before anyone even dreamt of Mokena State Bank, the Mokena Exchange Bank was on the scene. Time has not been kind, and the narrative of this institution has proven impossible to reconstruct through the fog of the ages. It’s hazily remembered that it was in the hands of father and son Ozias and Erwin McGovney for a time, and that future Mokena mayor and Chicago Board of Trade man Noble Jones was running it in 1882, when a failed attempt to dynamite the safe shocked the community. Sometime in those last two decades of the 19^th century it went defunct, and nearly every trace of it was swept away by the ebb and flow of time. 

 

   At the dawn of 1900, Mokena found itself in something of a slump, with a mere 281 people living in the village proper at the time. Eastern Will County was still reeling after the nationwide Panic of 1893, which led many Mokena people and businesses to seek greener pastures. An increase in railroad commerce in the younger towns of Alpine, Marley and Orland Park that normally would have come our way also didn’t help matters, and neither did the lack of good roads in our neck of the woods. Starting in the autumn of 1907, Mokena underwent a rebound, first with the opening of the Bowman Dairy Company’s bottling plant on today’s Wolf Road, and then with the first inkling of a new bank in our neighborhood. 

 

   The roots of Mokena State Bank were planted as early as October 1907, when the state auditor issued a permit to Fred Ehlers, an enterprising merchant from Grant Park in Kankakee County, to form a bank in our village. Whatever his connection was to Mokena and his reasons for going into commerce here have long since been forgotten, but it stands on the historical record that he took three of our businessmen with him in the venture. However, the state of the economy was still a bit shaky at the time, and not totally conducive to establishing a bank, as William Semmler, Mokena’s correspondent to the Joliet Weekly News noted that a “financial stringency” was abounding in our midst. He went on to detail that “the people around here have not much faith in bank scripts and other bank paper money that is issued, so it is declared, will not accept any such money at any rate.” As such, the bank project went to sleep for a while. 

 

   It sprung back to life a little over a year later, when another mystery man came onto the scene. A Chicago attorney by the name of H. Gilbrath engaged himself promoting a state bank in Mokena. Over those last few weeks of 1908, the idea was looked upon quite favorably by village folk. Optimism was in the air, and in reporting on the developments for the Weekly News, William Semmler wrote 

 

“Our business people and prominent citizens, as well as dairy farmers have come to the conclusion that a bank in this town would not only greatly improve business facilities, but will also benefit the town, and as we hope, prove to be a stepping stone to future worthy enterprises.”

 

   Stock in this new institution was being subscribed for at such speed, that just before Christmas it was confidently declared that “For its size, the bank will be one of the strongest in the county.” The local investors set their calendars for their first meeting on Saturday, January 2^nd, 1909. On a day filled with meaning, they chose 55-year-old Christian Bechstein as the first president of the Mokena State Bank. For many years a LaPorte Road agriculturist but lately a resident of the village, Bechstein had a seven-year term as mayor behind him when he took the president’s chair. He remained captain at the bank’s helm until the day he passed away in 1924. Filling the vice president’s position was George Cooper, member of prominent local farming family, while the secretary’s spot was taken by local grain merchant William H. Bechstein; President Bechstein’s nephew. Rounding them out was the youngest of the group, 31-year-old Frank Liess, who became cashier, a position akin to a modern teller. A further ten men were chosen for the new bank’s board of directors. 

 

   In early 1909, the new bank’s building committee was working on plans for their brand-new structure, and had engaged an architect named John Ahlschlager to draw up the plans. While he was a resident of Chicago, Ahlschlager had grown up on a farm a few miles southwest of town, while his family had been early members of St. John’s Church, proving that all roads lead back to Mokena. That March, after scouting for locations in the village, cashier Frank Liess bought a Front Street lot from elderly Franziska Stoll, that he in turn would sell to the bank for a handsome $550 before the year was over. The businessmen in charge of the concern couldn’t have asked for a better location, it being directly across the street from the Rock Island depot and smack dab in the middle of everything in Mokena. 

 

Mokena State Bank, as it appeared around 1910. Seen in the doorway are cashier Frank Liess (left) and president Christian Bechstein (right). This regal building stood on the north side of Front Street, about 75 feet west of Mokena Street. (image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

   As spring dawned, a fortuitous moment came when the bank’s building committee assembled at secretary William H. Bechstein’s grain office on Mokena Street and awarded the contract to Alfred Wenberg of Joliet to begin construction on the edifice. It would measure in at 36 by 22 feet, have solid brick walls and a regal façade of Bedford stone, containing stately columns and an august shield bearing the name Mokena State Bank. In May of 1909 ground was broken on the Front Street lot, and the first building materials began arriving over the Rock Island. The outlook was good, with the Mokena Phoenix-Advertiser boasting that “Mokena will have as fine a bank as any town of its size in the country.”  Another important contract was let in this time, namely for the bank’s steel lined vault, its burglar-proof door, an inner safe and 50 deposit boxes, all of which would be “of the best steel and workmanship.”

 

   As the walls rose on Front Street, last minute modifications were being made. A small addition was tacked onto the rear of the still-incomplete building to house its heating and lighting system in July, which proved to a month of great progress. Mokena concrete mason Julius G. Oswald and his workforce were busy plastering the walls then, while the character-rich stamped steel ceiling went in at the end of the month. In the first few days of August came the steel vault, which weighed in at 10,400 pounds, not reckoning in its door, which alone came out to 4,800 pounds. 

 

   All the finishing touches were being put on Mokena’s newest gem, and before the doors were finally thrown open to the public, all the modern conveniences such as an adding machine, a coal-fed stove for heat, and before long, a telephone were installed. Opening day came on Saturday, August 14^th, 1909, and it was a very busy day indeed, as 500 souvenir fans were given away. No small feat, as the population at the time was only a touch over 350 residents! The next big rush came for the newly unveiled Lincoln pennies, as many town folk wanted them for souvenirs. 

 

Scenic Front Street looking east towards Mokena Street, circa 1915. Mokena State Bank is visible at left. 

 

   All in all, the Mokena State Bank cost $5,000 to build, and by the end of September, $30,000 had been deposited there, roughly equal to over $900,000 in today’s money. It was an institution of financial security, and one of the stateliest buildings to ever grace our village. The old building served us faithfully for 63 years, busy as a beehive, and emerged from the Great Depression without as much as a scratch. The historic edifice was substantially remodeled and added onto in 1956, in a way that one could almost describe as brutal, as all of the grace and dignity of the original building were obliterated. In the end, the bank was unceremoniously erased from our landscape in 1972. 

 

  Join me on April 3rd, when we will explore a watershed moment in the history of not just Mokena State Bank, but also the village at large, when we’ll go back to the fall of 1924, to the day gun-toting ruffians terrorized our town.