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Sherry’s restaurant on 5
th
Avenue.
Horses rode the elevators and entered a hall where a canvas backdrop
depicted an English country scene and turf carpeted the dance floor.
While the horses, each attended by its own groom, ate from a circle of
troughs, white-tie-and-tail-clad guests dined from linen-covered trays
attached to their saddles and sipped champagne through rubber tubes
from iced bottles in their saddlebags. Waiters, dressed as grooms in scarlet
coats and white breeches, served the various courses. Dessert was Jack
Horner pies out of which arose a bevy of “belladonnas.”
The photograph of the “Banquet on Horseback” quickly became the
iconic image of the excesses of the Gilded Age.
Becoming a Mogul
Born into a wealthy family on September 17, 1861 at Saratoga, New
York, Cornelius Kingsley Garrison Billings had every advantage. His
father, Albert Merrill Billings, held many gas franchises in New York City
and was involved in several other ventures that included textile looms, the
first elevated railroad in New York City, and streetcar systems in Memphis,
Tennessee. About 1867, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where
Albert became president of Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company, which
had been selling gas for lighting since 1850.
C.K.G. attended Racine College in Wisconsin after which he went
to work for Peoples and spent several years learning the business. In 1885,
he married Blanche E. MacLeish of Chicago. In 1887, they celebrated the
birth of their daughter Pauline Blanche and the succession of C.K.G. to
the presidency of the company. As his fortune solidified, he became active
in Chicago community life serving as Commissioner of West Park in 1889
and as a director of the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.
In 1892, Billings purchased property in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
Known today as the “Hamptons of the Midwest,” Lake Geneva was a
summer enclave for Gilded Age barons of finance and manufacturing. He
Born into a wealthy and enterprising family in 1861, C.K.G. Billings
succeeded his father as president of Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company
of Chicago in 1887 and became a founder of Union Carbide Company in
1898 (Photo courtesy of Santa Barbara Historical Museum)
C.K.G. Billings on the Queen of the Trotters, Lou Dillon, in Santa Barbara.
Billings established a stable off Salinas and Cacique streets. Today, Lou Dillon
Lane and Uhlan and Lou Dillon courts commemorate the historic duo.
(Photo courtesy of Santa Barbara Historical Museum)