In late August, Patrick Arbor, the former chairman of the Chicago Board of Trade, and his wife, Antoinette Vigilante, a developer in Kenil-worth, sold their Kenilworth home—only to move into another they already owned a block away in that tony North Shore suburb.

The couple bought the house they have just sold, a red brick mansion built in 1929, for $3.7 million in January 2006, even though they had already begun restoring the other house. “Somebody came along who wanted this one,” says Vigilante. “I didn’t want to be the proud owner of two $5-million houses with the real-estate market so quiet.” (They bought the house in which they are currently living three years ago for $1.875 million; the restoration work has likely driven up its value.)

The architect C. Whitney Stevens designed the sold house for E. F. Hamm, the president of a printing company. Set sideways on its lot (so the French doors along the front get washed in western sunlight), the house has lots of leaded-glass windows framed in limestone, a three-story oak staircase, and ornate plaster moldings on the living- and dining-room ceilings. “In 20 years, I’ve lived in six houses in Kenilworth, and this was by far the best,” Vigilante says. “It feels like you’re on an estate in the English countryside.”

Arbor, a former math teacher who was the chairman of the CBOT from 1992 to 1998, now heads his own company, Arbor Investments. Public records do not yet identify the buyers of the house.

Photograph: Chris Guillen