Barrington Hills Mansion Full of Toys: Matchbox Cars, Star Wars and a Lost iPhone

In Barrington Hills sits a $1.5 million stone mansion that looked like it was being emptied out. I figured they were cleaning it out to demolish the place. The description says there is nothing online about the owner or why the place was left. My best guess is that it belonged to someone who loved collecting and has since passed away.

I explored it with StringerMedia. Most of the house was cleared out. The garage was not, and that is the video.

What we found

The front door was open. The stone work is beautiful, there is hardwood everywhere, and there was a fountain out front that used to pump water up to the top. The doors were secured with bike locks and cords, and there used to be alarms, though now all that is left are motion sensors. There was no power. The living room was empty except for a chandelier, a fireplace and a dehumidifier that I took for a mold fighter.

The toys started inside the house. A knight, a Spider-Man, a Santa Claus that looked so creepy, a nutcracker and a bunch of figurines. In the back there was a pool with the bottom gone and what looked like a cover, a diving board in the corner, and a very small playground that was overgrown. I bet the whole house used to look like that, full of everything.

The kitchen was the nicest room. A Sub-Zero fridge, hardwood cabinets, a double stove, solid granite counters and a built in sink with a very outdated faucet. Louisville Slugger bats stood in the corner, and I joked about it until I saw they were genuine. Then one of us went into the garage and came out with an iPhone with a wallet and cards still on it. The battery was dead.

Upstairs had another chandelier, a fireplace, a mini fridge and what looked like a second master bedroom. We heard noises at one point and stopped to make sure nobody was out there.

The bathroom had a tub with pillars, a jacuzzi and a double shower. The walk in closet was massive, and there were two laundry rooms, one upstairs and one down. A small bedroom still had its mattress.

The basement was gutted, with mirrors on the walls and what I took for mold. Past that was the room I did not expect. A vintage trike, a root beer keg, a Batmobile, a Spider-Man bike, Dale Earnhardt toys, a pedal car, a Strawberry Shortcake wagon and a horse, and a wine cooler in the corner.

Then the family photos. People dressed up, some on a farm, one group that looked like businessmen, and an old car. I wondered if one of them was in the military.

Back in the garage, it was packed. There was an Energizer Bunny toy, Coca Cola toy cars, a George W. Bush figure, a lot of 007 stuff and Matchbox cars. An unopened Terminator and a Wizard of Oz poster. The Christmas decorations looked like the ones my mom used to have. There were Batman and Ice Age DVDs, military toys, airplanes and baseball everywhere. Starting Lineup figures, a team mascot, a pinball game and an entire bag of Coppers and Gangsters.

It is packed so full that you can’t get to the back. I would have had to climb on everything and I would have broken things, which I did not want to do. Further in I could make out a Muhammad Ali boxing game, Star Wars, Star Trek, X-Men, Lord of the Rings and a gremlin. This guy was definitely a collector.

Why places like this end up empty

I don’t know this house’s story, and I don’t want to invent one. What I can show is that big houses in this part of Illinois can sit for a long time without anything being wrong with them.

Crain’s Chicago Business reported in November 2023 on a six bedroom house on about 21 acres in Barrington Hills that was listed in July 2005 for $6.6 million and finally sold for just over $2.38 million after 18 years and four months. The house was actively listed for all but about 26 months of that. The same piece cited weak demand in the Barrington area in 2018 and noted that homes there were averaging 56 days on the market by 2023, about a third of the 2018 time. A 46 acre estate nearby sold in July 2023 for $5.6 million after two years and five months.

The Real Deal told a similar story about a Barrington Hills mansion listed in 2013 at $15.3 million. It went under contract in September 2021 and again in April 2022, and both deals fell apart. By May 2023 the sellers had scheduled an auction for July after roughly a decade on the market.

None of that explains this house, but it shows how slowly a house this size can move.

I never made it to the back wall of that garage because getting there meant climbing over things I didn’t want to break.