Landwerlen Leather has become well weathered over 4 generations

He was barely old enough for school. Just 6 years old.

Yet, Leo Landwerlen skipped into his grandfather's leather shop and went to work.

He swept floors. He stocked shelves. He ran errands, making deliveries to the hundreds of shoe cobblers that made their livelihood in the city.

Seventy years later, Landwerlen still walks into the same shop at 365 S. Illinois St., Landwerlen Leather Co., a wholesale and retail business catering to the shoe repair industry.

Not a whole lot has changed in this place where the smell of tanned leather hides mixes with the mustiness of a century-old building. Where the worn, wooden floors creak and the click of a typewriter still creates invoices.

And then again, everything has changed.

People don't repair shoes anymore. They throw them away. Fewer than 20 shoe repair shops exist in the area.

Landwerlen now is the only shoe repair wholesaler in the state, one of just 40 nationwide.

But this isn't a story of a vanishing business down on its luck. This is one of survival. One of strength and perseverance that only comes with a family-owned shop that dates back to 1908 and claims four generations.

"We've survived by being honest with people and giving them the best quality for the best price," said Leo Landwerlen, whose grandfather, Louis, founded the company that has supplied countless pairs of laces, dyes, polish, insoles and leather to shoe repair shops across the country.

"We have old-fashioned values and old-fashioned service and that wins," said Dee Landwerlen, Leo's wife. "I guess you could say we're old-school."

We definitely can say that.

It was the 1880s when Louis Landwerlen came from the countryside to look for work in the big city. He was just 18. He found it, shaking salt from cowhides at the old Taylor Co. leather shop Downtown.

By 1908, he had opened his own shop in the same building it operates in today.

Instead of shoes, however, Louis Landwerlen founded the company to make wide leather belts that ran on machinery. He quickly started dabbling in other leather trades and supplying to shoe cobblers.

This was the true golden era of shoe repair -- just before and during World War II. Times were hard, and leather and rubber were strictly rationed. People needed their single pair of shoes to last.

At the time, there were 75,000 shoe repair shops nationwide. Today, there are fewer than 7,000, said Mitch Lebovic, with the Shoe Service Institute of America.

"The shoe industry today is challenged by inexpensive shoes," he said. "What Landwerlen does, it's increasingly rare these days."

The company will be honored this summer at the institute's annual meeting for being in business more than 100 years.

Lebovic himself, whose business is in Maryland, has ties to the Landwerlens. It was Robert Landwerlen, Leo's cousin, who hired him to work for the shoe institute in 1987.

Robert and two other family members gave up their ownership of the company to Leo in 1983. Around then, Dee, a school teacher, came in to work full time.

Today, the business has technically been passed on to their two boys, Eric and Mike.

But both Leo and Dee still come to the shop almost every day. Eric is the working partner who joins them, along with just one other full-time employee.

Dee teases that Eric "wasn't interested in higher learning."

"I'm happy here," Eric said. "It's the only job I've ever had."

But with a family business comes a lot of ribbing and the requirement to be completely frank with one another and move on.

Like the little spat about the invoices last week. Eric still writes his by hand. Dee likes hers to "look neat," so she does them on a typewriter.