Structural Memorials

Address: 2 W. Busse Avenue

Built: 1912

Demolished: 2006
What is currently at that address: Blues Bar

2 W. Busse has ties to a number of important businesses and people in the history of Mount Prospect. It was built in 1912 and was used as the home of William Busse’s Hardware store. When it was built, Mount Prospect did not have electricity or indoor plumbing. The village was not to be incorporated for another five years and there wasn’t a foot of paved road in town. The population was still predominantly German and tied to railroads and the farms. This store established the Busse family as a commercial interest in Mount Prospect and helped to put Mount Prospect on the map. The building was constructed by hand by local tradesmen and is the oldest brick building standing in Mount Prospect.

Originally the building had a flat façade with simple geometric brick design along the cornice. Later, in 1928 an addition was put onto the front of the building over the original two central windows on the second floor that extended about two feet out from the front of the building and peaked about three feet above the roof line. This new façade was built with half timbered design and was meant to match the building next to it that had been built in 1927.

William Busse’s Store grew rapidly from its opening and was soon selling farm implements and all sorts of goods. In fact, before the building was even completed, it became the first car dealership in town. The story is that William Busse was in Chicago in 1908, walking down Michigan Ave with one of his business partners, Barney Franzen. They passed by a Buick dealer and became fascinated by a car in the window. William Busse was interested in the car but was a little cautious. He and his business associate agreed to go into it together. They each bought one of the cars and William Busse was thrilled with it. Two years later he decided to upgrade from a two to a four-cylinder car and went back to the Buick dealer. He was so impressed by the car that he contacted the manufacturer and told them that he was interested in becoming a local agent. He was informed that the dealers in Chicago had agreements that covered the entirety of the county. Two years later, while William and his son Albert were on the roof of the 2 W. Busse building, laying the last of the shingles, a stranger climbed up the ladder. It turned out that this man was a Buick representative and that he had come to offer William Busse a local agency for selling Buicks. He brought the paper work with him and William Busse jumped at the opportunity. He signed the paper work right there on top of the roof and Busse Buick was born.

At first the dealer ship had no garage. They would display the new cars on the street in front of the hardware store and at night they would roll them into the back of the store. In 1915, they built a cement block structure next door and began to offer full service repairs. In 1918 they built a new garage on 30 S. Main Street. They expanded this location in 1921 and it was finally complete in 1928. A year earlier the cinderblock structure was demolished to build the building that is today next door.

In that same year, Busse’s hardware store was dissolved. The Buick dealership became independent, the farm implement business was sold to the Meyn family, and the hardware store was sold to Frank Biermann and became Busse-Biermann Hardware.

In that year, the Mount Prospect State Bank took over the building and used it for a number of years. The Mount Prospect State Bank was one of the most influential businesses in the development of Mount Prospect. The bank was formed in 1911, originally as a national bank. It became a state bank in the 1920s because of a need for more flexibility in real-estate loans and other services. It was originally located in a small building on the northeast corner of Busse and Main, which later became the Mount Prospect Public Library, a delicatessen, and a real estate office before it was demolished in the 1960s. William Busse, the most influential person in the development of the community, founded the bank and used it as the financial backbone of his developments. In 1928 at the height of the boom of the 1920s, the bank moved from its original building to the larger building at 2 W. Busse. In this location the bank weathered the Great Depression of the 1930s and was one of very few financial institutions to go through the depression without willingly closing its doors. The exception to this took place in 1933, shortly after the inauguration of President F. D. Roosevelt, all banks in America were ordered to close and work out their books. The Mount Prospect State Bank closed its doors for the first time. However, it was one of the first banks in Illinois to reopen in a time when only a fraction of the area’s banks ever reopened. Mount Prospect’s resolve and financial discipline in this time, all of which was made possible through the work of the Mount Prospect State Bank and William Busse from his office at 2 W. Busse, is one of the great defining stories of the community.

The bank then worked through the Second World War from its location on Busse Avenue. Following W.W.II, Mount Prospect went into its largest building boom ever and the State Bank was there to finance it. Between 1950 and 1960 Mount Prospect’s population grew by almost 500%. Many of the homes were built by returning GIs who went straight to 2 W. Busse to finance their new homes and open a bank account. The bank at this location was the largest savings bank in Mount Prospect and a center in the community. Finally, in 1967 the Mount Prospect State Bank decided it needed to move again to a larger location. They built the building that later became the Mount Prospect Village Hall and was recently demolished. The building that the bank left behind proved to have much more resilience than the new one that was built. It later became an ice cream store, the home of Roller Derby legend, Sammy Skobel’s Hot Dog’s Plus, a Mexican restaurant, a pizza place, and today an Italian restaurant.
Let us know about what you remember from this building. We will include your thoughts in our research files and may put them on-line as a part of our structural memorials.

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Demolished: 1985

What is currently at that address: Sunset Park

Sunset Park School was built at the height of the baby boom, when Mount Prospect’s student population was growing rapidly every year. School District 57 built a new school every other year in the 1950s, but by the end of the 1970s many of the Baby Boom children had outgrown the schools like Sunset Park and the student population dramatically declined. In 1979 School District 57 put the building up for sale with an asking price of $900,000. However, the presence of asbestos and the lack of bidders caused the school to lower the price to $750,000. There were still no bidders for the site, until the Mount Prospect Park District approached them with an offer of $500,000 for the land without the building. After negotiations, the land was eventually sold for $600,000 in 1985 and the school was demolished.

Built: 1913

What is currently at that address: School Yard

As the German immigrant community developed into the community of Mount Prospect, one of the early important developments was the founding of Saint Paul Lutheran Church. The founding of this church signified a shift from the exclusive community centered on the farms to a more outward looking town focused on the train station and connections to other communities. The charter for Saint Paul was signed in 1912 and this building was dedicated in 1913. This was one of the most beautiful churches ever built in Mount Prospect and was a truly classic design. With the growing population, Saint Paul needed to expand. Rather than expand the existing church, they built a new one and, perhaps more tragically, rather than finding an alternate use for the building, such as renting to a smaller church group, using as offices or converting to a residence, it was demolished. Nothing has ever been built on the site.

Name of Building or Business: Prospect Theater

Address: Main Street

Built: 1950

What is currently at that address: Condos

The Prospect Theater was once a center in the community. It was a classic one screen theater with a location to which hundreds of families could walk. It opened in 1950 and was big deal in a small town like Mount Prospect. This was the first real theater to open in the community and it was a sign of the community’s development. It opened the day after Christmas with Tea For Two, starring Doris Day and Gordon MacRae and Copper Canyon starring Ray Milland and Hedy Lemarr. When the Prospect Theater opened, it was the heyday of downtown theaters. Before the development of huge multiplex theaters on the outskirts of towns, the downtown theater was a mainstay of local entertainment and social life. However, with increased developments along the periphery of towns, the one screen theaters had a hard time competing with much larger theaters that were located outside of town, but had more parking. Over the years, the Prospect Theater was surpassed by these larger theaters and was not maintained. The distinctive marquee and awning were taken down when Route 83 was widened and by the time it was demolished the theater did not look like a center for local community life.

Name of Building or Business: Northwest Hill Country Club House

Address: 600 S. SeeGwun

Built: 1929

Demolished: 2003

What is currently at that address: Mount Prospect Golf Club House

The Country Club was built by Axel Lonnquist, the developer who originally laid out the golf course and the neighborhoods surrounding it. He was one of the largest developers in Mount Prospect’s first real estate boom in the 1920s. The golf course was constructed first, then a children’s playhouse and finally the clubhouse. Originally, the country club was built as an incentive for real estate speculation. It was operated as a private club and membership was restricted to those who bought property in Lonnquist’s development. The original 1929 building was the showpiece of this early suburban housing development. Lonnquist helped to redefine the village of Mount Prospect and, in a small way, suburbs nationally. In the 1920s, when Lonnquist came to Mount Prospect, cities were beginning to be seen as threatening, rather than places of opportunity. Lonnquist played off of this and the history of the glorification of nature, the role of domesticity, and the idea of the home. This, tied to the investment in transportation and the technological advances in housing construction, made it the right time and the right place for a person like Axel Lonnquist.

His development in Mount Prospect was different from earlier subdivisions in town. He purchased the farms of Fred Schaefer and Henry Mensching in 1925 and planned “a luxury community.” He planned to utilize both the natural beauty of the area and the modern ideas of suburbs for this community. In his advertisements, he heralded the semi-rural landscape with the proximity to the scenic Weller Creek, safe from the hectic pace of the city. He also advertised the numerous trains in and out of the city for working professionals. This was meant to be a push and a pull with the ideas of escaping to the bliss of the quiet country home while needing top get your family away from the pace and corruption of the city. He specified that the lots in the development were to be large enough to support both a comfortable home and good-sized yard. The crowning glory of this development however, was to be the Northwest Hills Country Club. His idea was that membership in this would be associated with owing a lot in his development. He opened the Country Club in 1926, although it was then only a nine-hole course. He later expanded it to an 18 hole course and, in 1929, opened the clubhouse.

Although Axel Lonnquist was able to redefine Mount Prospect, he was not able to make a lot of money on the endeavor. Due to the timing of his investment, he was not able to sell most of his land before the crash of 1929 and the depression that followed. He sold his property in Mount Prospect at huge discounts in 1931 to cover debt. In the time that he owned the land, he had been able to plat the streets, build the country club and a few demonstration homes, but he built very few homes that are standing today. The Country Club was then sold to a man named Harold Wilson who changed the name of the club to the more familiar Mount Prospect Country Club. He made it a semi-private club with annual dues and held onto it until 1950, when he sold it to Henry Sophie. Sophie ran the club until 1958, when he sold the course to Richard Hauff, who was a suspected member of the mafia. Hauff was very controversial, but redesigned the course, hosted the Women’s Master’s PGA tournament in 1959 and then declared bankruptcy in 1960 and put the course up for sale. After an involved fight to pass a referendum, the Mount Prospect Park District finally purchased it in 1961. Over the years, a number of additions were put onto the clubhouse leaving hard to recognize any historic value in the building. The structure was eventually demolished in 2003 although when it came down, a time capsule was found in the corner stone. This held a little glimpse of the glamour and luxury that this building had once represented.

Name of Building or Business:  Moehling Home

Address: 8 E. Northwest Highway

Built: Circa 1890

Demolished: 1966

What is currently at that address: Condos

John C. Moehling moved to Mount Prospect in 1882 and built a beautiful Victorian house across the street from the Railroad station a few years later. Moehling was on of Mount Prospect’s biggest promoters; he ran the first store in Mount Prospect and was responsible for the opening of the first post office. He was also responsible for bringing John Meyn, the first blacksmith, to town and working to transform Mount Prospect from a wide spot in the road into a small town. John C. Moehling’s house represented his importance to the community. The house stood at 8 E. Northwest Highway and was built around 1890. Over the years, the house did not fair well. Northwest Highway was expanded and this made the house very close to the street and John Moehling’s success at bringing business to the community left his house in the middle of a commercial area. With these changes, the house deteriorated. Due to a number of short sighted decisions, storefronts were built in front of the building for such things such as the Prospect House Restaurant and Francek Reality, which was operated by John C. Moehling’s descendants. The house declined and what was once the finest house in town, home to the community’s biggest promoter and an actual Victorian house, became seen as an eyesore and was demolished in 1966.

Name of Building or Business: Meyn Grocery Store

Address:  19 W. Busse

Built: Circa 1925

Demolished: 2006

What is currently at that address: Nothing

William Meyn’s grocery store stood in this small half timber structure. William was one of the sons of John Meyn, the first blacksmith in Mount Prospect and the brother of Herman Meyn, the second blacksmith and the second Mayor of Mount Prospect. At one point, the entire triangular block bordered by Northwest Highway, Main Street and Busse Avenue belonged to the Meyn family. While the Meyn family is not as well known as the Busse family, they were a major force in the development of early Mount Prospect. John Meyn was born in Schleswig-Holstein and immigrated to America in 1882 at the age of 19. He worked as an assistant blacksmith in Arlington Heights for a year before he was persuaded by John C. Moehling, Mount Prospect’s first postmaster and owner of the general store, to move to Mount Prospect and open his own shop. He was the first blacksmith in town and ran the business for many years. Having a blacksmith shop was an early step towards development. When most transportation required horses, you needed to have someone who could shoe the horses and repair wagons in town if you expected the town to grow. This is why John Moehling went out of his way to persuade John Meyn to move to Mount Prospect and how the family became very influential in town.

William Meyn was the second oldest son of John Meyn and while his older brother followed his father in becoming a blacksmith, William decided to start his own business. He built this two-story building near his father’s shop, which also happened to be along the most developed stretch of downtown Mount Prospect. The store sold canned foods, breads, fresh meat, and some tools. The business ran for many years and was an institution in the early Mount Prospect. The building has since housed a number of other small businesses, most recently a barber shop.

Name of Building or Business:  Grocery Store later His and Her Hobbies

Address: 15 W. Busse

Built: Circa 1935

Demolished:  2006

What is currently at that address:  Nothing

This building was originally constructed with a classic Art Deco façade of black and white glazed tiles. This probably was the most modern building in Mount Prospect when it was built. The property that this building sits on was originally the garden behind the Meyn family’s home and blacksmith shop. It is possible that a member of the Meyn family built this building as an extension or modernization of the William Meyn Associated Grocery store which stood next door. The building did originally serve as a grocery store and was tied into the Busse Block Business District.

The building later had its façade modified twice. The reason for the first modification is not known, although it was much less severe than the second modification. In the late 1950s the original art deco glazed tile façade was covered with irregular flat stones. While this covered the black and white tiles, the building still maintained a similar structural appearance. However, this style did not last long and the building’s façade was again changed in 1984. This new façade radically changed the architectural style of the building, placing half timber frame construction along the outside, adding an artificial sloped roof line and an off centered peaked façade. This new look for the building was designed by an architectural firm hired by the village of Mount Prospect and a portion of the construction costs of this renovation were paid by the village through the Façade Improvement Program, an aspect of the downtown plan of 1983. For many years, this building was home to His and Her Hobbies, an independent, locally-owned craft and hobby store.