By Barbara Benson

In conjunction with Secretary of State, Jesse White, Cuba Township is pleased to offer 2 classes for Illinois drivers. 

Both classes will be held at the Cuba Township office at 28000 W. Cuba Road, Barrington., IL

MOBILE DRIVER SERVICES DAY

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

10am to 2pm

Residents can obtain:

Duplicate driver’s license

Corrected driver’s license

Illinois State ID card

Driver’s license renewal

Please refer to www.cyberdriveillinois.com

For more information on fees

 

RULES OF THE ROAD

June 16, 2010

9:30am to 11:30 am

This class is designed for anyone needing to take the written portion of the driver’s examination.

The class is offered at no charge, however,

A reservation is required.

Please call the Township at (847) 381-1924 to make a reservation

Continuing a series that features some famous, or famous/infamous residents of Cuba Township, this issue features both a house and its various owners, who had many claims to fame.  This is the property which is now known as Grassmere Farms, and its signature building, the white painted frame house that stands on the south side of Route 22 just east of the intersection with Route 59.  While little is known about the earliest owners of the property, one well known occupant of the residence is believed to have been Irene Castle, of the famous Vernon and Irene Castle dance team.  After Vernon Castle’s death in the First World War, Irene remarried 3 times, her third husband being Major Frederick McLaughlin of Chicago, who founded the Chicago Blackhawks in 1926.  I was told by an older resident in the 1980s, that the McLaughlins lived in the house for a short while, but their main residence was in Lake Forest.  In 1928, Irene leased, and then purchased 10 acres of land in Riverwoods, and founded Orphans of the Storm, which she supported until her death in 1969.

 

Dates are inexact, but in the mid-1930s, and according to plat maps, Gene Byfield, a horse enthusiast and polo player, bought the property that is now the Equine Center at Routes 22 and 59.  Gene’s brother Ernest was the flamboyant owner of the Ambassador East Hotel which was part of the Hotel Sherman Company in Chicago, inherited from their father.   Ernie created  the Ambassador’s famous Pump Room.  There, in Booth #1, movie, stage and musical celebrities, who in those years rode the train between California and New York, stopped to be interviewed for Chicago radio and newspapers, but also to boast that they had lunched with Ernie.  Byfield was the first restaurateur to serve spiced tomato juice cocktail and his restaurant also became the first in America to serve so many flambeed dishes. 

 

Ernest bought the property across the road from his brother, and with his architect Sander Davis, set about livening up what had been a simple, dormitory-like country home. Part of the improvements included a “mad house” named it is said, after the preferred retreat of English country gentlemen after quarrels with their wives.  It had a dance floor, a brass fire pole leading one floor down to a bar decorated with firefighters’ hats and a small fire engine.  As a boy, Byfield’s favorite toy at White City, the huge amusement park on Chicago’s south side, had been an auto on the back of which was painted “The Mayor of Firetown”.  As a successful business man, the adult Byfield realized some of his childhood dreams in a whimsical way on this property.

 

To call his guests for four o’clock cocktails in the mad house, Byfield let out a blast on a fire siren built on the side of the house.  This sounded all over the Barrington countryside. At the signal, guests who stayed in a “playhouse” that faced the mad house across the swimming pool, were expected to jump in, swim across the pool, and then slide down the fire pole to the bar where liquid refreshments awaited them!  We don’t know specifically the names of his guests in Barrington, but his circle included the literary set, Charles MacArthur, Ben Hecht, and Robert Benchley among them.  Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall repeated their marriage vows in the Pump Room and bandleader Johnny Mercer was a friend of Byfield’s.

 

Charles MacArthur was married to the actress Helen Hayes, and his brother was John D. MacArthur, who purchased Banker’s Life and Casualty for $2,500 and created one of the great fortunes of his time.  When Ernest Byfield died in 1950, the property was sold to the MacArthur Trust, and its residents became Paul and Estina Doolin.  Paul Doolin was John MacArthur‘s right hand man; he and his wife were hospitable people, and continued to have a steady stream of visitors at the estate. Some interesting footnotes to the story include the coincidence that the architect Sander Davis’s son, was Editor of the Barrington Courier-Review for some years in the early 1980s, and one of the Courier’s reporters actually first began to piece together the Byfield/Barrington connection.

 

John MacArthur also purchased property around Baker’s Lake in Barrington, including the Spencer Otis Round Barn and Silo, which is now part of the Cook County Forest Preserve.  In the early 1980s, the barn was being considered for a possible arts center, and when a thorough inspection of the building was made, the loft area was found to contain dozens of boxes of files from Banker’s Life and Casualty.  Sadly the barn fell victim to vandalism, and finally had to be demolished.

 

This series is fun to write, every name takes one down a new path, and between Google and Wikipedia searches there is yet more to come!