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Location: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
2 W. Busse
The building in front of you
has ties to a number of important businesses and people. It was built in 1912
and was used as the home of William Busse's Hardware store. This store grew
rapidly 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 both go into it together. They both 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 building in front of you, 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 when the cinderblock structure was demolished to build the building that you see next door. In that same year, Busse's hard ware store was dissolved. The Buick dealership became independent, the farm implement business was sold to the Meyn family, the first blacksmiths in town, 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
.
It later became an ice cream store, the home of Roller Derby legend, Sammy Skobel's Hot Dog's Plus, a Mexican Restaurant, Baby Lou's award winning pizza and today it houses Rufini’s Italian Restaurant.