EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2014.
The building on the south side of the Square we know today as the Coney has been a restaurant for a long time, but it was originally conceived as a furniture store and funeral parlor.
The urban brick structure was built by the Wappner family in 1873 for their furniture business, and like a great many of the furniture dealers of the 1800s, they also dealt in coffins and chairs for folks whose funerals were held at home. When the funeral business outgrew the furniture space on the Square it was moved to Diamond & Second Streets, where they remain to this day a great comfort to the community.
The Wappner building on the Square evolved into a restaurant known as the Wonder Bar in the mid 1930s with dancing, dining and drinking until it was gutted by fire in 1945.
By 1948 the space was occupied by Park Billiards, a cigar store, with an Army & Air Force recruiting office upstairs. When the Army moved out Park Billiards turned the second floor into a ‘Sportsman’s Club,’ where various interesting forms of illegal gambling took place until they got caught at it.
In subsequent decades the upstairs served as a Central Group headquarters for Mansfield’s AA community, and the street level was reestablished as a restaurant, today the Coney Island Inn.
