The story of the auto-related businesses that have operated at the current site of Brookfield’s Hollywood Motors seems to have begun in late 1925. In the January 1926 Illinois Bell phone directory there’s an entry for the “Hollywood Filling Station, Woodside Ave., Brookfield-3109.”
In addition, the Classified Yellow Pages had a listing for the filling station. It seems pretty reasonable to assume that sometime in late 1925 was the actual opening date for the Hollywood Filling Station, which was replaced by Hollywood Motors a few decades later.
Anyone reading the Brookfield Diamond Jubilee Book from 1968 read these two sentences: “Edward Nemec opened a small gas station with a small garage for repairing autos at 3637 Woodside Avenue back in 1926. His son, Frank Nemec, took over in 1939 and remains at the helm [in 1968].”
The station was apparently run by various members of the Nemec family (a Joe Nemec was listed in a 1928 directory as the “proprietor” of the Hollywood Service Station). Frank Nemec began running the gas station, taking over from his father, Edward, in 1934, according to a 1947 Brookfield Magnet newspaper article.
The Hollywood Filling Station was next known as the Hollywood Service Station by 1939. During the summer of that year, Magnet newspaper ads asked readers “Making a trip? Get your ‘touraide’ at the Hollywood Service Station! Fill up with Conoco Bronz-z-z Gasoline! Change to Conoco Germ Processed Oil! Have your car Serviced the Conoco Way and you are off for a happy vacation!”
Perhaps Frank is the better remembered of the Nemecs for several reasons. He seems to have been quite outgoing, and likable. It is known that he didn’t just fix cars, he fixed bicycles, too. A real all-around mechanic. Then there was Frank’s musical side.
The July 31, 1947 Magnet reported that “Nemec at one time played the string base with Emil Flindt’s popular band at the Melody Mill ballroom. He was also a member of the orchestra that entertained dancers at Madura’s Dance Land, on Chicago’s South Side. The program there aired over [radio station] WIND during 1940 and 1941.”
Frank ran his service station by day and played music by night, but it was a lifestyle that began to take its toll on him. His father, Edward, had completely retired from the business in 1939, and left him to carry on. Frank finally decided to hang up his string bass and concentrate on the service station. One event that may have led to this decision was that he had to undergo some surgery in February 1946.
But once he had recuperated, he gave some thought to changing the look of the old filling station, which was over 20 years old. The last week of July 1947, he announced that construction would very soon begin on a new building, a combination of a service station and an automobile show room.
Plans called for it to be of brick construction, 82-by-80 feet, and it would cost around $35,000. Three hydraulic hoists would be installed, with an Alemite unit, to make possible a complete quick and easy greasing service. The auto showrooms would be on the northwest side of the building.
Ground was broken for the new building on Saturday, Aug. 2, 1947. The ceremony was brief, with two of Nemec’s mechanics-Bud Hallberg, and Matt Wersching-helping to turn over the first shovels of soil. The end of that October was the estimated completion date for the new Hollywood Motor Sales station. The brick walls for the eastern section were up, along with the steel beams to be used for the roofing, as of Sept. 11, 1947.
The completion date the modern building has been said, for many years, to have been in 1948, but it appears that everything was in place and operating by mid-Autumn 1947. Some of the new Kaiser-Frazier autos for 1948 gleamed in the sunny showroom windows.
Frank Nemec eventually dropped the auto showroom idea, but kept up his usual fine level of service until he sold out the entire business to Larry Mitch before 1978. Mitch ran things as good as ever until Oct. 2, 1987, when he sold Jeffrey Wahl the business and building, by now simply known as Hollywood Motors.
Wahl, from the Brookfield-LaGrange area, was certainly no stranger to the automotive business. For nearly 12 years previously, he had managed car dealerships such as Pollak Cadillac, Castle Buick and Bower Buick of LaGrange. Wahl maintained that by keeping his staff well-trained, and pricing competitively, he could offer an even higher quality of service.
In a little over a year after he acquired Hollywood Motors, tragedy struck in the form of a devastating fire on Oct. 13, 1988. My brother, Tim Stach, was a mechanic working there at the time, and when he returned home, a few hours after the fire, I took down the specifics of his eyewitness account, and expanded it with information of my own.
It was a little before 9 a.m., on that sunny Thursday morning. All around Brookfield, patches of overnight frost lay on the trees, leaves and grass. Thirty-seven degrees was the temperature, and a wind was blowing from out of the west, right to the Brookfield Avenue doors of Hollywood Motors. The doors were slightly opened for ventilation.
While I took notes, Tim Stach told me that “a mechanic was removing a gas tank from a car up on the rack, a Chevy Chevette. To the side, hanging on the rack, was a work light that had an open socket. Some gas spilled out of the tank, that hit the open socket, and created a flash of flame. The bulb on the work light exploded.
“The burning gas fell down from the grease rack and flames shot up, spreading instantly. Three, or maybe more, mechanics tried to fight the flames with extinguishers, but it was no use.
“The owner, Jeff Wahl, yelled ‘Everybody get out of here!’ The mechanics raced to the doors. Within two minutes more, the flames spread throughout the shop and the roof began caving in.”
In shock, the employees watched as the building burned, and firefighters from Brookfield, Riverside, Lyons, LaGrange, LaGrange Park, North Riverside and Pleasantview responded to the call for help. Some 250,000 gallons of water were poured on the building in the next five hours. Firefighters tried to save whatever they could, but pretty much all that was left were the exterior walls. Damage to the building and contents was estimated by Fire Chief George Zahrobsky at half a million dollars. An earlier estimate, by Wahl, had pegged the damage at $300,000.
Ten cars, including a limousine, were totally destroyed by the fire. Tim Stach had been working on emissions testing a car before the fire had started, with one last test to complete. In five more minutes, the test would have been completed, and the car would’ve been out of the shop and safe. But that was not to be. He had to leave the work undone. While Hollywood Motors blazed and fell to the ground, the motor of that car kept running, running, running. Finally the collapsing roof killed the engine for good. That car would never run again.
Later information revealed that seven or eight fire extinguishers were used to try to control the fire, and the Brookfield Fire Department had received the first call at 8:48 a.m. Only a few hand tools were saved. One great bit of fortune was that none of the Phillips 66 gas pumps out front had caught fire.
Wahl declared his intention to rebuild Hollywood Motors as a newer and more modern building. On April 1, 1989, the new Hollywood Motors opened on the same site, with a still distinctive, curved wall. However, no gas pump service was to be offered here any more.
Since that time, a few other changes have taken place. “Back in 1999,” stated Wahl, “we started being a sales dealer for ‘Big Dog’ motorcycles. We customize and repair the ‘Big Dogs,’ too, and also Harleys.”
This, then, is what the old Hollywood Filling Station of the Nemecs has evolved into: a modern automotive business where you can still expect fair prices and quality, whether you drive up with four wheels or only two.