A Legend To Live Again: The History and Future of 11116 Front Street

Since the early days of Mokena, 11116 has been a place where the community gathers to drink, socialize, shop and eat. For more than a decade now this property has sat vacant. The property is now undergoing a renovation and will be host a new restaurant, The Dock on Front Street!  I asked Mayor Frank Fleischer about the restaurant and got his thoughts on what this can do for Front Street. 

Mokena is excited about the future of this building, but if you really want to enjoy and appreciate what this property will become, you want to understand where it has been. Matt wrote this great article in 2001, detailing the rich history of this place.

Be sure to check out our YouTube channel for our full video tour of the property as well! It’s pretty cool! Matt's blog post that this article is based on can be found by clicking HERE. 

Transcript

Israel: 0:00

Welcome to Mokena's Front Porch a Mokena History podcast with Mac Dalek and me, israel Smith. This podcast we're going to talk about one of the oldest buildings in Mokena. It's been around for a long time. Many different variations, from pizza places to general stores and grocery stores, filled this building in the past and now it's going to be filled again as a restaurant, hopefully by the end of 2024, which is really exciting for Front Street. Bring another restaurant downtown, something to draw people to our downtown and hopefully encourage more growth going forward.

Israel: 0:40

Gino Pichola, the owner of the property, was kind enough to give Matt and I a tour of the building and went through. There's a great. We put a great YouTube video out shows the full tour walking through the property, the old beams, the different sections. You see them as they were built on. It's such a neat property. It was neat to see in this stage and they're going to let us come through and see the different stages as we get closer to completion as well. So that's exciting. So check out that YouTube video Again.

Israel: 1:14

Gino gave us a great tour. We got to meet the owner, rick Traffton, but it's not in the video. He was working with the architect, so we wanted to save him that time, but we're going to get together with him soon. Great Moquina guy, local guy, and you'll hear more about that. So very cool that there's also a connection for this restaurant and for Moquina. So Matt gives us a cool little history beforehand. You see in the video a lot of what you'll hear more in depth in this episode. So it's a great old building, really cool. Rick was interested in keeping some of the historic stuff so Matt talked to him about getting him some pictures and things to put up. So that'll be really cool to see as well once that place is done. So I also was speaking. I got a chance to speak to Mayor Frank Fleischer about something else and I mentioned to him about the restaurant and wanted to get his thoughts. So you hear some of his thoughts on this restaurant, the dock coming in as well.

Israel: 2:19

As you know, we heap a bunch of praise on Gino Pichola and all the hard work that he's doing, the things that he's doing to bring our front street and make it more fun and more options and make it something that people are drawn to and come down to. So thanks to Gino for doing that and you'll hear the Mayor is appreciative as well. So be sure to check out our website, be sure to check out our YouTube channel. We're putting more and more stuff. I just loaded a fun video from our Easter Egg hunt last year, from the Mokena Lions Easter Egg Hunt, and so I've been, you know, putting those things here in there. So real community stuff. So check out our YouTube channel, check out our website, which is Mokenasfrontporch. com , and make sure to check out our Facebook page as well.

Israel: 3:05

We've got some great things coming up for the podcast, great episodes that we're working on that I think are going to be really interesting and great history pieces for our village. This is a great property. It's got a great history. So many people from our village are connected here. So enjoy this episode. I would like to ask you because I'm the next episode I'm having coming out is about the dock on Front Street. You know the old historic building. We did a video walkthrough. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are. What do you think about that? Coming to downtown?

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 3:36

Well, the funny thing is, since I was a trustee and we're going back all the way back to 1985 I always felt we couldn't have a downtown. We just had to work on it. I always felt that Mokena had you know, it's maybe the place to get a good downtown and I had to fight people for that. I had to fight elected officials over the years for that. And now you're starting to see that we can't have a downtown. You're starting to see restaurants coming in. You know Docks is one of them. He's a well-dead, he's a well-known restaurant. We're not just going to get people from Mokena to go there. There's going to be people from outside of Mokena. That has known these guys for years.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 4:19

I like the idea that the owners are born and bred in Mokena. They've been around for a long time. Their father was active in St Mary's Church. Can't remember what we were talking about, but we talked years ago about a project or something and Benny said that he wanted to spend in Mokena.

Israel: 4:37

They're happy that they're going to be here, yeah, and we talk a little bit about Gino Pachola and his hard work he's done to keep this building standing and not. You know, I love the fact that we're going to have this old structure that's been around for some of it early, early, early days of our village and people are still going to get to enjoy that today. I think that's great.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 5:05

You need somebody, israel. You need somebody that wants to develop the downtown, like Gino.

Israel: 5:10

Yeah.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 5:11

He's trying to save the buildings, but, even more important than that, he's the one that took the chance.

Israel: 5:17

Absolutely.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 5:18

He's the one that put the money on the line and he has the two. He's going to have the two restaurants going downtown. I have a lot of respect for him. He's a young man and he took the chance on doing it. I appreciate it very much. Yeah, absolutely I appreciate what he's told from Mokena very much.

Israel: 5:35

It's a huge positive for our downtown and you know we talk about the history of Mokena and that's what our podcast is, and there's people like Gino, through the years of Mokena, that have made positive changes and kept our downtown or our village or that moving in a right direction, and I would give him that label for sure of somebody that is making a huge positive impact on our downtown, mokena.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 6:00

Oh, there's no doubt about it. And the thing is, what I tried to get across to the board for years was that until we make, until we let people know that we're not going to work and push for downtown investors are not going to come in and drop money in Mokena. They're just not going to do it. I mean, if the board has been excited about it, why should they be?

Israel: 6:25

Yeah, that's great.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 6:27

And now things are starting to pop. Couple weeks on going to a restaurant I can't mention the name right now, but I'm going to a restaurant he definitely wants to build a building in the downtown area of Mokena.

Israel: 6:39

Oh, that's great to hear. Well, I hope once they make the agreement, let them know that Mokena's front porch is the place to go for the scoop, cause we had such so many people excited about the video and getting the tour of that old building.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 6:53

So that would be great, because I'll tell you. And there's another restaurant. Okay, they want to leave an area around here. That wants to come to Mokena, and I'm in the process of looking for a place for him, but he wants a special place, so I'm trying to find another one so we can have two restaurants. That would be great it already has a following in the area.

Israel: 7:18

Yeah.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 7:19

So this is what I'm getting the kick out of. For years, people told me, israel, that we're not going to have a downtown. We're not going to have a downtown. Well, they were full of blowing. I did a poll a few years back, four years ago, when I ran the last time, and we thought, and I wanted to question, is I asked was it about downtown? 72%, 72% of the residents in Mokena wanted a viable downtown. Wow.

Israel: 7:45

I'm one of those 72 for sure, so putting both my hands raised. We live in downtown and we love having options to be able to walk down and enjoy and walking downtown and seeing you know the beautiful downtown at Christmas and it's been such an improvement over just when we've been here and I think more people want to see more of that. So it's great it's happening.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 8:07

I agree with you and somebody younger people I'm talking to. You know people want to get involved in politics and people want to get involved in zoning and planning commission. But they tell me is they just want to go downtown. They will love to go downtown to a restaurant and meet one of their friends down there in their family. Yeah, that's what they want to do. That's why it seems like the young people you know want to downtown. They want someplace to go, they want place someplace to meet friends of theirs.

Israel: 8:38

Yeah.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 8:39

And hopefully now they're going to get it and then, when you're going to fire him, starts moving along, because we got some plans for young groups. Fire, yeah, you know people will start going over there. They can come into downtown to get something. I'll tell you, it's really mean. Not so many years. Think about what Mokena has. You've got a downtown, a viable downtown that needs work, right next to Mr Yonkers farm, and then south of that is the Forest Preserve.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 9:07

And years ago the Forest Preserve wanted to put winter activities in that area and I'm going to go talk to them and find out if they still have plans to do that, such as cross-country and things like that. Exactly, Cross-country tubing hills and winter activities.

Israel: 9:25

Oh, tubing hill, that's a great idea.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 9:28

So they wanted to put things in out there. They wanted to work with us. You know, we've got to show them we're willing and, like I said, this is sorry to mean us the potential is there. We could have one of the best. I mean we could have the best downtown in the area Because, think about it, nobody has what Molkina has, nobody in downtown, nobody has a train station, but nobody has a downtown that I know connected to their park district, like that, yeah, connected to the Forest Preserve.

Israel: 10:03

All right, matt. This episode we're talking about the building that's at 11116 Front Street, and you posted this blog post back on Friday, march 5th of 2021. Called Beer Suds to Piping Pizza a history of 11116 Front Street. So, matt, how do people know 11116 Front Street today?

Matt: 10:28

Yeah, so this is the building that is immediately west of Curtin Call Theater. Nowadays it's empty. Now, the last business that was in there was Paulie's Restaurant For quite a while back in the oh, about mid 2000s, up until oh, I can't even place it when he closed finally, maybe like 2012 or 13. One of our listeners may have a better sense of when he closed his doors, but longtime Molkanians will remember this as the location former location of A Pizza, one of the great pizza places of Molkina, and also, going back even farther than that, was Wilbur Teske's grocery store.

Israel: 11:14

And you talk a little bit about it in the story, but you've had a lot of personal connection to this place and spent a lot of time there as a young person. Yeah, I'll share a little bit about that. Yeah, I would love to.

Matt: 11:25

You know A Pizza was a cool place. You know there was absolutely nothing special or anything remotely fancy about the place. It was just a regular pizza place. But what was cool about it is that the owners at least as far as I was ever able to tell never seemed like they had any kind of problem with kids, you know, like high school age kids going and hanging out there. Or, you know, maybe a little younger, like junior high age kids. You know, as long as you're a customer, you weren't just loitering.

Matt: 12:08

But it was a place where my friends and I went quite a lot just to, you know, get a pizza and kind of you know, take our time eating it, and a place where you never got looked down at for being an unaccompanied kid, because there I won't name any names, but there were businesses in town where they kind of had like an unofficial, unattended teens aren't welcome here kind of stance, and A Pizza was never one of those places and it was just a cool. Yeah, it was just a good place to go with your friends and kind of be out without your parents.

Matt: 12:50

Any games or anything they have in there or they had a bunch of classic arcade games in there, cool. The one I remember the clearest was Miss Pac-Man yes, playing that a lot. I remember they had Area 51, that kind of shoot them up alien game.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 13:10

That's the best way I can describe it.

Matt: 13:12

They had a few more. They had one of those. I think they had one of those claw machines in there. They had super ghouls and ghosts. I remember another classic from the 80s and early 90s. Yeah, you know, it was just. It was just a cool place, something like you'd see on like a TV show or something. And yeah, once again, it was. This was not a. There was nothing sophisticated about this place at all, which isn't I'm not trying to put it down or anything, but it was just a real small town kind of place that I have. There's a lot of good memories attached.

Israel: 13:55

And you know we'll talk about it. You know this place is. This is a very old building in town, oh yeah. And it started as a bar. Was there any of that kind of stuff left over, any of the interior from earlier days?

Matt: 14:12

You know, not really, unfortunately, going back in my memory and I was already interested in in Mokena history when I was going there. So I was kind of looking around. There was nothing I remember seeing back then that struck me as being Historic or original or anything, unfortunately.

Israel: 14:32

But yeah, but the building is still there, so that's yeah, and we're going to try to talk to Geno for this as well, but Geno Pachola is the current owner of the property and it was just approved for some renovations, and so that's positive.

Matt: 14:50

Good news and yeah, absolutely.

Israel: 14:53

Hopefully we have some life back in that building again soon. Yeah, I hope so. So all right, matt. Well, let's hear this great story. Here's to piping pizza. A story of 11116 Front Street.

Matt: 15:08

On a walk down Front Street, one is greeted by many familiar sites here the Curtin Call Theater, there the former tribes beer company, not to mention other local mainstays as part of our village streetscape. It's easy to become so used to the scene that many of these buildings are easy to take for granted. Notwithstanding, our most historic structures demand our attention and appreciation, and one of those is the old structure at 11116 Front Street which most recently was known as Paul E's Restaurant. In the last two decades of the 20th century this place was a pizza, a front street fixture, a well-known gathering place for Mokena's youth. This writer wild away countless hours here with his friends, counting many days of joy and mirth in this spot which, on more than a few weekends, could become quite crowded. It's easy to find a Mokenian who can remember both of these eateries, but the history of this landmark reaches back well over 150 years and includes more than a few interesting personalities. The heart of this story, like so many in our fair village, lies with a member of the storied Schick family.

Matt: 16:24

Georg Heinrich and Juliano Rosino Schick were all natives of Neckarbischofshain in the German Grand Duchy of Baden. Building their family there, the couple welcomed 11 children to their fold before leaving the old country and emigrating to America in August 1848, arriving on the heels of unrest and revolution in their old homeland, setting foot in Chicago with 305 frank pieces in their name, the Schicks stayed there only a few days before trudging on foot southward, before they came to their new home in what would become Frankfurt Township. Georg Heinrich and Juliano Rosino's middle son, ferdinand, came into the world on September 12, 1832, and was 16 years old when his family set down their stakes in our midst. He tried his hand at farming, the family profession, and would later even come into his own acreage a little further west from the family homestead, down what is today 187th Street, near where Marley now stands. In the spring of 1871, ferdinand Schick entered the business world of Mochina, when he bought a front street lot and the two parcels adjoining to the north and northeast from Peter Knapp, valued altogether at $2,500. This is the property that is today known as 11116 Front Street.

Matt: 17:56

At the time of Schick's purchase, a building already stood here. However, it was likely not the structure which currently stands on this spot, boasting decorative wooden cornices and framed windows. This rambling edifice is a stunning example of the vernacular Italianate architecture that was popular in the American Midwest in the years following the Civil War. This current structure and all of its outward treasures likely date from the time of Ferdinand Schick's acquisition of the property. Interestingly, the building's northern half, tucked behind the main structure like a shy child, is of an even older vintage, displaying attributes of the Greek revival style, a feature seen in Mochina houses in the 1850s and 1860s, the earliest period of our village's history. This is possibly the first building on the lot and it's not out of the realm of possibility that it was pushed a few yards to the north to make room for a new structure. Alternately, it may have been moved from elsewhere at a later date and then tacked on to the main structure.

Israel: 19:10

So a couple of things. For one, I wanted to ask what the connection with Lester Schick, who we've talked about before is and this Schick family.

Matt: 19:21

Yeah, so Ferdinand Schick and Lester Schick are. They are related. This is the same family. Let's see, ferdinand Schick would have been Lester Schick's great-granduncle. So Ferdinand Schick was the brother of Lester Schick's grandfather.

Matt: 19:41

Wow, Okay, yeah, that's the younger brother of Philip Schick, who is Lester Schick's grandfather. Okay, yeah, to seg back to the principal section of the building that faces Front Street. Ferdinand Schiek opened a saloon within these walls around 1871, where he was also known to board guests overnight, along with a host of other Moquina and Frankfurt saloonists. He was indicted by the Will County Grand Jury in early 1879 for selling drink to a habitual drunkard. A trial soon followed in the county seat, which took up two days and the testimony of some 50 witnesses. By the time the dust was settled, schiek and his fellow bar keeps were each fined $20 in costs by the court, along with 20 days in jail, the time in the lockup to let up. As soon as the fine was paid, the Joliet media was decidedly aligned against them, the daily news of that place blustering. That should teach them to look out for these old suckers who should be fined for each offense just the same as the saloon keeper who sells it to them. Legal trouble notwithstanding, ferdinand Schiek became very successful in his business, as is evidenced by his Christmastime 1883 purchase of a musical machine which, in the words of the Will County Advertiser, is a whole brass band within itself. The buy set Schiek back $600, or about $16,000 in today's money. On Christmas he treated his customers to a concert from the contraption. He appears to have kept up the watering hole and hostility until the end of 1891, when he and his wife Louisa sold the property to Mokenian Charles Mariety and his younger brothers, george and Frank, at the end of that year for $2,400. And whence the Schicks moved to Juliet, his life caught dramatically short. Ferdinand perished there in early 1897 in a ghastly fire.

Matt: 21:47

New owner, charles Gilson Mariety, was a lifelong native of the Mokena area and a Civil War hero to boot, having volunteered for duty in the 20th Illinois Volunteer Infantry as a 17-year-old in October 1864, having exaggerated his age by a year, he later became an auctioneer, where he was known around town as Colonel Mariety cried sales all over the region and was also known for his ability to do them in German, which made him much in demand amongst Mokena's Teutonic population. In the tradition of the building, the Colonel and his brothers ran a beer hall here, but they weren't long for this place as they flipped it in January 1893 to John Wanamaker. The Wanamaker bunch were another old Mokena family arriving in our neighborhood as early as 1848 via Erzhausen, a small village near the Hessian town of Langen in south central Germany, a point of origin for many of our earliest pioneers. As luck would have it, the Wanamakers carved out their home off of today's 187th Street, a stone's throw from the aforementioned Schicks. John Wanamaker was born March 24, 1850, and, like his neighbor Ferdinand Schick, was an agriculturist in the earliest years of his life.

Matt: 23:10

Before opening his own taproom in Schick's old building on Front Street in 1893, the same year of Chicago's legendary Columbian Exposition, john Wanamaker's saloon became a Front Street mainstay and could also be quite a lively place, as is shown by the dance he gave on July 4, 1902. Mokena's correspondent to the Lockport Phoenix Advertiser, in referencing the party with a thoroughly salty mean, wrote that there was considerable doing that day and next down in the West End, in fact, so much some came near forgetting where the beginning was and when the finish should occur. Another newsworthy party appeared here in October 1910, this time not for its raucousness but for the fact that each of its guests arrived in autos, newfangled machines that were not yet often seen on village streets. One of three saloons in village during its time, wanamaker's boasted billiard tables, an ornately carved wooden bar, a stack of wooden kegs in one corner and spittoons on the floor for its guests, according to show its age. John Wanamaker spruced up the place in the summer of 1914, just as World War I was about to kick off in Europe. Aside from being a liquor purveyor, wanamaker was also a civically-minded resident and served as a village trustee from 1904 to 1906. He sold beer at this location for decades, until the 1920. Country-wide prohibition on the sale and manufacture of most kinds of alcohol almost threw him out of business. The federal census that year listed John Wanamaker as the operator of a soft drink parlor. Around this time frame, his son, george, who attended the bar and waited tables in the tavern, began to take more of an active role in the affairs of the business.

Matt: 25:11

George Wanamaker was a unique personage in Mokina's history, if only for a very serious disability that he had, namely the loss of his left eye. While working on a Minnesota farm as a 21-year-old in the summer of 1907, wanamaker and some of the other young men he worked with were experimenting with dynamite caps and electric currents. While holding two caps in each hand, an electric battery was switched on and the wire touched his hands, causing an explosion of almost fatal results. The young Wanamaker was sent to a specialist in Chicago for his severely injured eye, whereupon the doctor in charge ultimately removed it. Like his father, george Wanamaker was elected to a spot on the Mokena Village Board and held this office from 1919 to 1925.

Matt: 26:03

As the town and nation at large were officially dry for most of this time, the former taverns in the community removed the coverings on their storefront windows in an effort to prove that there was no shady business going on within. Oddly, george Wanamaker's stayed in place and when the village board asked him what was going on, he became oddly defensive. Rumors swirled around town, which eventually made their way to the county seat, joliet. So it was that on the evening of January 19th 1925, will County Sheriff's deputies raided the property and discovered gambling equipment such as punch boards, as well as illegal moonshine, whiskey and wine. These items and Wanamaker himself were hauled to Joliet by the authorities. The village trustee made bail but wound up paying a hefty $700 fine for keeping these materials on his property.

Matt: 27:00

After having gotten his dose of legal medicine, a change of business was in order for George Wanamaker. He put saloon keeping legal or not behind him and converted his place into a grocery store, bringing his newly branded doors to Moquina on June 24th 1925, after having the building newly remodeled and painted. Wanamaker carried the standard brands of packaged, bottled and canned goods, as well as fruit and vegetables and season. He was a liberal advertiser in Moquina's village newspaper, the News Bulletin. One ad from July of his opening year reminded customers that a dry goods line had been added to the grocery department and that shoppers would find men's work and dress shirts, overalls, straw hats, sheeting, calicoes, ginghams and notions at the store. Another from a year later boasted three pounds of Peaberry coffee for $1.35, one quart of Delwood cocoa for $0.25, and two cans of Friesland peas for the same price. Illustrative of the rural environment that was our village at the time, the store was kept open until 9 pm during threshing season.

Israel: 28:17

So I just wanted to go back a little bit to the fact that the village trustee was arrested for selling booze during prohibition.

Matt: 28:28

Yeah, yeah, that he was all right, absolutely.

Israel: 28:31

Any idea, like what the ripples around town were from this? I mean, did it affect his time as trustee? You know?

Matt: 28:40

he did. That was his last year in office. Whether or not I can't remember offhand, without those materials in front of me, whether or not that was just because his term ended then, or because maybe he resigned, I'm not sure. I am wanting to say, though, that it was. That was just when his term ended, yeah.

Israel: 29:02

He's just wondering, because obviously somebody was selling him out and they were talking to him. I wonder if that would have kept him from running again.

Matt: 29:12

Yeah, he doesn't appear to have held any public office, as far as I know, after that, but in any case he still stayed in business at his old location for decades after that, just in a different kind of business. So he must not have been too disrespected by this. But I mean, he did get in trouble and he paid a very hefty fine for it. But yeah, he wasn't the only front street businesskeeper to have been discovered in that era for this kind of stuff, yeah, so.

Mayor Frank Fleischer: 29:51

OK.

Matt: 29:52

Yeah yeah. Mokena was good to George Wanamaker in his business, sustaining him throughout the Great Depression and World War Two. An accordion studio found a home in the building during the postwar years and customers to the store could hear musicians practicing. In the prosperity of this era, the store became affiliated with the chain of Midwest stores and, in accordance with its color scheme, the front facade was painted yellow. Wanamaker also began carrying frozen food for the first time and completed in addition to the western side of his building in the spring of 1955. After 39 years in business on Front Street, george Wanamaker retired and sold the concern to his nephew, wilbur Teske, in 1964.

Matt: 30:42

Teske kept up the store in the tradition of his uncle, which was simply known as Wilbur's in the mouths of many locals, and it was known as a place among Mokena youth as a good spot to cash in on empty pop bottles and spend the proceeds on penny candy.

Matt: 30:57

After Teske's long tenure here, the old landmark became the home of a ski and sport shop briefly before Bill Frankenberger opened a pizza here in the 1980s, feeding countless village folk. Until well into the early 21st century, this eatery was a home away from home for the youth who came to bask in the glow of the Miz Pac-Man machine or smile at the motorized pizza chef in the window with his fuzzy mustache and outstretched hand. In 2004, a new restaurant, pauli's, set up shop here. Nowadays, building is owned by Gino Pichola, who is going to carry out some work on the old place and get a new business. Word on the street is he's looking at getting a restaurant in there and we're hoping that it's just as great of a success as the old businesses that were there in the past, something that'll stay for decades and a place where new memories will be made for Mokenians, young and old. Renowned American author, robert Heinlein, said a generation which ignores history has no past and no future.

Israel: 32:15

Well, that's great, matt. You know it's a great story to know that property still sits, after so long, on Front Street, yeah, and, and especially with, you know, being neglected for so long. Yeah, right, and you know, as, as we said, gino Pichola had recently got plans approved, so hopefully in the near future we'll see another restaurant in there that yeah the youth can go to and play video games or whatever it is there.

Israel: 32:45

So well, great. Well, we'll, as always, share the link to the episode in the show notes and it's on the website. But again, this episode was beer suds to piping pizza. History, a history of 11116 Front Street. So thanks again, Matt, for sharing this great story. Absolutely.

Matt: 33:04

Thanks.

Israel: 33:05

Thanks to Gino for doing the work. Yeah, absolutely for keeping a landmark for us.

Israel: 33:09

Absolutely. Matt and I both really hope that you're enjoying the podcast and that you enjoyed this episode. We would really appreciate it if you would share our podcast with your friends or family, as well as leave us a review on Spotify or Apple music or wherever you hear our podcast. We'd love to hear your show ideas or your questions so you can send us an email at podcast@ Mokenas front porch. com, or on Facebook through messenger, or through our website, which is Mokenas front porch. com. You can send us a message there. We have a link in the show notes to Matt's blog post that this episode was based on. We have some great things coming up and we're really excited to share with you. So thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Mokena's front porch.