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# From Gold Bars to Bourbon: The Reinvention of a Streator Landmark
- URL: https://www.thestreatorstandard.com/f/from-gold-bars-to-bourbon-the-reinvention-of-a-streator-landmark/
- Published: 2025-07-03T21:33:10.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-19T13:58:59.000Z
- Author: The Streator Standard
- Tags: Community

Once, it stored family fortunes. Now, it serves craft cocktails. Welcome to Gaetano’s Vault—Streator’s boldest experiment in memory, atmosphere, and Main Street reinvention.

Located on the corner of Main and Park Streets, the old Union National Bank building has anchored downtown Streator for over a century. But today, instead of bank tellers and safety deposit boxes, it’s home to prohibition-themed booths, polished cocktails, and the low hum of jazz. Rick and Stephanie Wilkinson, the couple behind the renovation, named it after Rick’s Sicilian grandfather, Gaetano “Tony” Cantello—an immigrant whose journey from Italy to America now echoes through the building’s brick and brass transformation.

A Safe Investment in Local History

The structure’s bones are historic. In fact, they’re foundational to Streator itself.

The story begins with Samuel Plumb, brother of Colonel Ralph Plumb, the city’s founder. Samuel arrived from Ohio and opened The Bank of Streator—the city’s first financial institution. As business boomed, he filed for a national charter and launched Union National Bank in 1874\. By 1912, the elegant new building on Main and Park symbolized Streator’s prosperity, topped with stately mirrors, steel vaults, and marble floors. Even today, those original vault mirrors still gleam behind the bar.

Stephanie writes, “Imagine the decades of gorgeous faces that have reflected in those vault mirrors… heirlooms, birth certificates, passports. One day in May 1932, it reflected something very different—a robbery.”

And not just any robbery. As the Times-Press reported, it was “the most daring robbery in the history of downstate Illinois.” Ten men—many with Chicago mob ties—stole $52,000 and $14,000 in gold. Nine were caught within a week. The tenth turned himself in eight years later. The safe cracked, but the legend sealed.

From Bank Robbers to Brickwork

When the Wilkinsons took possession of the building, they didn’t paint over the past—they chiseled it out. Brick was exposed. Original ironwork was restored. Upstairs spaces were reclaimed for small businesses and artists. The entire building was reimagined as a vintage speakeasy—less Olive Garden, more Gatsby.

The project wasn’t small. “If I told you how BIG, you wouldn’t even be able to wrap your mind around it,” Stephanie teased in a 2021 Facebook post. “Old banks converted to restaurants have a big following. Who would have known!?”

They kept the vault seating—now available by reservation—and added a rotating menu that’s flirted with farm-to-table inspirations and local flair. And while the food may sometimes shift as chefs come and go, the atmosphere has never wavered. You walk in, and you're not in Streator anymore. You're in a chapter of American architecture, gangland lore, and community vision.

Rick summed it up on the day they opened: “Our mission is to make Streator proud to have such a unique destination restaurant.”

A Living Symbol of What Streator Could Be

Gaetano’s Vault is more than a themed restaurant. It’s a model. Not of growth-by-grant, or build-it-and-hope, but of something older and wiser: stewardship. The Wilkinsons didn’t ask the city to subsidize a teardown. They chose to reinvest in what already stood—proving that our buildings don’t just house history, they make it.

Downtown Streator, once the beating heart of commerce and culture, has struggled under the weight of disinvestment and shifting economies. But as the 2014 Downtown Strategic Plan noted, revitalization doesn’t require skyscrapers. It requires destinations. Stories. Layers of identity.

And what better destination than a literal vault—now opened—to hold new memories, new conversations, and maybe just a little mischief under the chandeliers?

We talk about economic development like it’s a grant proposal or a TIF district map. But sometimes, it’s as simple as a couple saying, “Let’s bring this place back to life.”

That’s the real treasure in Gaetano’s Vault. And no gangster can steal it.