The Mokena State Bank - A Front Street Institution For Over A Century

Step inside the hallowed walls of The Mokena State Bank, as we chronicle over a century of its rich and vibrant history.  This story takes you on a journey that captures the spirit of this iconic institution that has endured safe cracking, robberies, and economic tremors, yet stood firm as the heart of the local community.

This bank was one of Mokena's most beautiful and ornate buildings. While there was a previous attempt, the Mokena State Bank was the first bank to establish themselves. The bank was run by well known community members and became a place full of activity over the years. In a time before ATM's and drive through tellers, almost everyone in town knew the bankers by first name.

While the site of this old Mokena treasure still hosts a community bank, it is no longer the Mokena State Bank that so many community members trusted to hold their treasure for over a century.

We talk about 2 of Matt's blog posts in this episode. You can find those here: #1 The Currency of Time: The Early Days of Mokena State Bank; #2 Stick 'Em Up: The 1924 Robbery of Mokena State Bank. 

Chapters

• 0:00 The Mokena State Bank
• 11:28 Remodeling Mokena State Bank's History
• 17:59 Bank Robbery

Transcript

Israel: 0:00

Welcome to Mokena's Front Porch. A Mokena History podcast with Matt Galik and me, Israel Smith.

Matt: 0:08

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. It was an institution of financial security, 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. In the matter of seconds, 45 caliber cold pistol was shoved through the bars into Crop's face and a brusque voice barked hands up. Mokena was a changed place after the heinous robbery, with all strangers looked upon with suspicion.

Israel: 0:50

This episode we're going to talk about the Molkina State Bank.

Matt: 0:54

We've got a couple articles.

Israel: 0:59

This one is the early days of the Molkina State Bank that you published on Sunday, march 20th of 2022. It's interesting because a number of the businesses we talk about you really see the bank does become a center of town, a very important place, especially in the early days of Molkina when farmers needed a place to put their money.

Israel: 1:24

Businessmen we're off the railroad, so there's those concerns as well. It is interesting to see how this bank came about. Then we talk a little bit all the way up to today, While we don't have the Molkina State Bank, the legacy of that property and how it's changed over the days, Even the pictures in here are some of my favorite pictures of Molkina. I love the old Molkina Bank.

Matt: 1:58

It was really cool it was it really was.

Israel: 2:00

Yeah, it's amazing To see that in the streetscape. It was just really neat, Really neat to see. It would have been awesome to see that building in person. I definitely agree. I wish I could have. So we're going to talk a little bit about the early days and then we've got another story about a robbery that took place at the bank in 1924. Exactly, that was a lot as well, definitely, anything you want to preface the story with.

Matt: 2:32

The Molkina State Bank, while it still existed, might very well have been Molkina's longest living business. It was founded in 1909 and got absorbed into the state bank of Illinois. It was about exactly 100 years later, 2009, 2010. Wow, so yeah, I can't think of anything else that existed, business-wise, for 100 years.

Israel: 2:57

Wow, and again, this is a story where we hear names of people that we've been hearing about all throughout the podcast episodes.

Matt: 3:07

Right.

Israel: 3:07

Yeah. So again it's like these business owners and front street business owners that really took a part in the community and civically really to make the community better.

Matt: 3:24

Yeah, absolutely yeah, they definitely did.

Israel: 3:26

Well, great as I said, this was posted March 20th 2022, and it was titled the Currency of Time on the early days of the Molkina State Bank.

Matt: 3:37

What 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 townfolk, weathering safecrackings, 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 21st century was originally the Molkina 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 Molkina State Bank, the Molkina Exchange Bank was on the scene. Time has not been kind and the narrative of this institution has proven impossible to reconstruct the fog of the ages. It's hazily remembered that it was in the hands of father and son, azaius and Erwin McGoverny for a time, and that future Molkina 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 19th 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, molkina 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 Moquina 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, moquina 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.

Matt: 5:45

The roots of Moquina 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 Kankiki County, to form a bank in our village. Whatever his connection was to Moquina 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 Semler, moquina's correspondent to the Juliet 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 any 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 Moquina. For those last few weeks of 1908, the idea was looked upon quite favorably by Vilge. Folk Optimism was in the air, and in reporting on the developments for the weekly news, william Semler 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.

Matt: 7:42

The local investors set their calendars for their first meeting on Saturday, january 2, 1909. On a day filled with meaning, they chose 55-year-old Christian Beckstein as the first president of the Moquina State Bank. For many years a La Porte Road agriculturist, but lately a resident of the village, beckstein 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, a member of a prominent local farming family, while the secretary's spot was taken by local grain merchant William H Beckstein.

Matt: 8:26

President Beckstein's nephew, frowning them out, was the youngest of the group, 31-year-old Frank Leiths, who became cashier, a position akin to a modern teller. A further 10 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 Allschlager to draw up the plans. While he was resident of Chicago, allschlager had grown up on a farm a few miles southwest of town while his families had been early members of St John's Church, proving that all roads lead back to Moquina. That march, after scouting for locations in the village, cashier Frank Leiths bought a front street lot from elderly Francisco 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 Moquina.

Israel: 9:35

All right. So, matt, can you just give us a picture in today's front street of where the bank sat?

Matt: 9:42

Sure, so the old bank sat or the original bank, I should say sat on the north side of front street, just a tad west of the intersection with Moquina Street, where we have the big parking lot there for the bank, for what is now Chase Bank or not Chase Bank, midland, midland States Bank, or it's my bank, I don't even know the name of it Midland Bank. There were a few different buildings. Where the parking lot is now and the bank was roughly could say was roughly about where the driveway is for the drive-through lanes of the bank. Right about there is where that original bank building was.

Israel: 10:29

So to the right of that, we would have the general store at the time. Then let's see At the time.

Matt: 10:37

I believe that would have been the Colbert hardware store on the east and then actually on the west. Yes, that would have been the Sutter general store on that old building that was just to the west there, as spring dawn of our tourist moment came when the bank's building committee assembled at Secretary William H Beckstein's grain office on Moquina 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 facade of Bedford Stone containing stately columns and an August shield bearing the name Moquina 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 Mokina Phoenix Advertiser boasting that Mokina 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 and inner safe and 50 deposit boxes, all of which would be of the best steel and workmanship.

Matt: 12:02

As the walls rose on the front street, last-minute modifications were being made. A small addition was tacked on to the rear of the still incomplete building to house its heating and lighting system. In July, which proved to be a month of great progress, mokina 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 in at 4,800 pounds. All the finishing touches were being put on Mokina'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.

Matt: 12:57

Opening day came on Saturday, august 14, 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. All in all, the Mokina 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, 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.

Israel: 14:08

So maybe you can describe that a little bit more. Why would you describe it as brutal?

Matt: 14:15

Yeah. So whenever I look at before and after pictures, you had the original 1909 building and then how it looked after they added onto the front of it and remodeled the front facade. It was just all of the just I can't think of a better word than just classiness of that original facade was just totally obliterated Really.

Israel: 14:43

When they remodeled it, so like they took the pillars and the front facade and all that was gone.

Matt: 14:49

Oh, wow, the pillars, the doorway, like everything that made that building great, was gone and it just transformed into like a concrete box. How sad, oh, it was terrible. Yeah, I just happened to cross a photo of the new bank quote unquote, the end result the other day and it was just I was looking at it and it was just like and was it still being used as a bank?

Matt: 15:13

Yeah, yeah, it was still being used as the Moquina State Bank when they added onto it. A drive through was added on and all this stuff. But yeah, it was just the. The 1950s, especially in Moquina, were not a period where historic preservation was really something that was really thought of, unfortunately.

Israel: 15:36

So yeah, yeah, so it cost $5,000 to build. And how impressive. They had $30,000 by the end of September deposited, or, as you said, equal to about $900,000 in today's money.

Matt: 15:48

Yeah, it was. It was popular and people were happy to have it and everybody wanted to. I mean maybe not everybody, but a lot of people wanted to use it services.

Israel: 16:00

Yeah, it clearly showed a need. Yeah, did other banks pop up in town after this one?

Matt: 16:08

Not for a very long time. Once again I'll say maybe somebody can correct me on this but just as I'm thinking in my head, the Moquina State Bank was definitely the only bank in town from 1909 until the end of World War Two. And as the town started growing in that postwar era, I want to say the next bank to come to town? Let me think here. I'm pretty sure the next bank to come to town would have been the Lincoln Way savings and loan, which was also on Front Street, which they built, the building that stands just west of where Dave Bergman's, dave's auto used to be and later tribes brewery.

Israel: 16:48

I believe there's a chiropractor, yeah, it was a chase, yeah, for a while it was a chase for for a good long time.

Matt: 16:55

Yeah, yeah, that was. That was the Lincoln Way savings alone and they opened in the 1970s. Ok, I really think they were the next bank to come to town after the Moquina State Bank in 1909.

Israel: 17:10

So that was a pretty long and did you as a young man in town? Did you have a, a, a passbook savings account at Moquina State?

Matt: 17:19

Bank Absolutely, I did, even my. When my parents first came to town they Set up all their stuff there and then when I got which you know before before me Then when I got old enough I got my how old I must have been, maybe 10, 11 years old I opened up my First account there and it was so cool. They gave me the Stomo Kina State Bank. Then they gave me the little yeah, the little book, and whenever I would go in to put more money in or take money out, they would feed the book into like a typewriter kind of thing and type all the numbers into it. I thought that was so cool. I know I still have that book somewhere.

Israel: 17:59

Yeah, no, I did too, from my the town in Wisconsin, you know yeah we had about $35 in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah no, it's super cool as a kid though. Yeah it was a big deal. Yeah, that book or running through the machine.

Matt: 18:12

Yeah, I feel bad for kids today that they don't have that experience.

Israel: 18:15

Yeah, right, Well, you just look it up online or yeah, right, yeah, yeah yeah. Very neat. So, as with any bank or you know, especially our, in our town it seems Businesses dealt with trouble on that. So yeah, next we're gonna hear the story of the 1924 Robbery of the Mokina State Bank. Yes, crazy story.

Matt: 18:42

And dusty small town front street. The acrid smell of soot from coal fed locomotives Would have greeted a visitor to Mokina in 1924. Citizens doing business past on the street where every face was familiar and every personality known the old Mokina 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 Mokina businessmen, this institution came to reflect a rock of financial stability in the rural farm village. It was here on Tuesday, october 27th 1924 that one of Mokina's most audacious crimes was committed. At 31 years of age on that autumn day, carl Krap was a lifelong resident of Mokina and the bank's assistant cashier. The son of one of the bank's founders, krap found himself occupied with some book work 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, 45 caliber cold pistol was shoved through the bars into Krap'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 Hankerchief wrapped around his face, krap realized the deadly seriousness of the situation the bank was being robbed.

Matt: 20:24

Also present in the bank at this time were local blacksmith Albert Brown and his brother-in-law Harry Peterson, as well as George Hacker, who not only was the bank's cashier but also served as Mokina's mayor. Having held the small building in their firm grip, the robbers herded Brown, peterson and assistant cashier Krap 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 Krap's side and Vulgarly threatened him. As cashier, hacker was forced into the bank's vault. Carl Krap would later recall that the criminals weapon felt like a cannon and, with his senses that 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 robbers haste that a packet of bills containing $200 burst onto the floor where it was abandoned. As quickly they carried out their brazen task. The criminals bolted from the bank and into a large touring car when 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 four thousand dollars, consisting of paper bills as well as gold and silver. Measured by the standards of today, the value of the heist would equal approximately fifty thousand five hundred dollars.

Matt: 21:55

In the immediate aftermath of the robbery, mokina and the surrounding countryside became alive with law enforcement personnel. After being notified by local telephone office manager Clita Denbour, will County Sheriff John Walker and deputies from Frankfurt, joliet, new Lenox as well as Mokina 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 streets 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 Krop, 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, and 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 thousand into custody.

Matt: 23:29

Newcomers to Mokina 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 Talzin were summarily locked up at the county jail. In their absence, authorities removed suitcases from their temporary place of residence in Moquina, inside which were found not only matching ammunition for the robbery gun but also pecan letters from local girls.

Matt: 24:18

The issue of James and Talzin intensified when it was discovered that the pair were known to be friendly with John Frisch, a Moquina railroad worker and the villages 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 Moquina village board was forced to investigate him until Deputy Fisher vociferously defended him, stating that James and Talzin had pulled the wool over Frisch's eyes as to their intentions. As history notes, no charges were ever formally leveled against James and Talzin. There was simply no conclusive evidence, no smoking gun, tying them to any involvement in the robbery of the Moquina State Bank. After their release from jail a short time later, james threatened to exact revenge on Deputy Fisher and promptly disappeared along with Talzin into the untraceable void of time.

Matt: 25:20

Moquina 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 a 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 to be opened only from the inside by means of an electric button.

Matt: 26:05

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, 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. Moquina may never know who is behind the robbery of October 27, 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.

Israel: 26:56

This robbery really changed I mean the bank and how it interacted with the community as well as the whole community, it seems.

Matt: 27:06

Yeah, it definitely did. People were very much on sort of like needles and pins after it happened and it was a small town where we're just about everybody knew everybody else and whatnot. Lots of families related to each other, stuff like this. But after the robbery it was a time when strangers were looked upon with suspicion, as the robbery was pulled off by out-of-towners and strangers that weren't known.

Israel: 27:42

And then the suspicion of the fresh deputy Frisch was there. I guess there was no real resolution to that. I mean, he was cleared and while deputy Fisher kind of stepped in and spoke up for him.

Matt: 27:58

Yeah, he did.

Israel: 27:59

But that's a lot of. I mean, he changed weapons with this one of these guys and there does seem like a lot of coincidence there.

Matt: 28:11

Yeah, it was definitely, I think granted, I wasn't there, but I think these two guys, james and Talzin whether or not they were involved in the robbery we may never know they definitely were a very suspicious characters though. But when they rolled into town I think they kind of identified deputy Frisch as being the town constable and tried to sort of make friends with them and try to maybe manipulate him, and from what it sounds like, he just kind of as deputy Fisher said he kind of unwillingly allowed himself to have the wool pulled over his eyes.

Israel: 28:50

Kind of a little too nice for his own good maybe, yeah yeah, yeah, exactly, and it wound up coming back to get him. So yeah, wow. So $50,000 in today's money, yeah, or it was about $4,000 that was sold. That's a big amount of money, yeah.

Matt: 29:06

Yeah, I mean, it was nothing to sneeze at. Yeah, I mean, they got paper money and gold and silver too, and this was also in the days when FDIC didn't exist to back up the funds of the bank. So I would imagine that local people lost their money when this happened.

Israel: 29:25

Well, that's what I was, because is there a central? I don't know if you know, but I mean we just heard about all this money that was injected into this new bank. I mean, you know, but you think they're holding a large portion of the money that's deposited by?

Matt: 29:44

sure by the community.

Israel: 29:46

Yeah, definitely. So, yeah, that's what would have been. Yeah, and how that's made up and how that's covered or the losses are are taken care of.

Matt: 29:55

It's interesting to think about it is. Yeah, I mean it definitely was a big event. Unfortunately, it wasn't the first time that some heinous crime had happened in Mokina, but it was. It had been a long time since Anything along those lines had occurred in town and yeah, I mean it really shook things up. I mean it was it was covered the. The robbery was covered by papers in Chicago even so, wow, yeah, yeah.

Israel: 30:20

Yeah, well, really interesting story, you know, and all together, I mean, when you think about the bank and, as we said, like this cool small town, yeah, you know, country kind of town bank, and you know, I know you have. We have another story that we might cover in another episode of another attempt on the bank. Yeah, yeah, you know, but yeah, really interesting, so it is yeah and again. Our deputy Walter Fisher is is talked about.

Matt: 30:50

Yeah he was there.

Israel: 30:51

You know, we you wrote the book on and that's right and played a part here too bad, that beautiful bank is still sitting on front street I know, I'm so jealous of Frankfurt.

Matt: 31:00

There their old bank is still there, but we lost ours. Yeah, yeah.

Israel: 31:04

Well, great man, this is another great story. Thank you?

Matt: 31:07

I think so too. Thanks for sharing these Absolutely.

Israel: 31:12

We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you're enjoying our show would really help us out a lot if you would leave us a rating and a review, as well as share our show with your friends and your family. There's a link in the show notes to Matt's blog article that this episode was based on, so be sure to check that out. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Mokina's Front Porch.