There is a house I pass by on occasion.
It is a sore thumb. A little stone chalet with a Swiss-ish turret clock behind a curved stone wall.
It has always struck me as an authentic place leftover from a different time.
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It is a sore thumb. A little stone chalet with a Swiss-ish turret clock behind a curved stone wall.
It has always struck me as an authentic place leftover from a different time.
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It is on a busy road and is a block away from a major highway.
It just always felt like an authentic leftover to me though.
So, I looked it up.
100 years ago, it was the gatehouse for a sprawling estate incomprehensibly vast by today’s standards.
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It just always felt like an authentic leftover to me though.
So, I looked it up.
100 years ago, it was the gatehouse for a sprawling estate incomprehensibly vast by today’s standards.
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A mile or more up that dirt road was *one of the homes* of the oil baron, Louis Hyde.
It was a solid drive from that little gatehouse to a mountainside mansion.
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It was a solid drive from that little gatehouse to a mountainside mansion.
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It was a sprawling estate. Beyond the mansion were several other homes for Hyde descendants.
The grounds covered somewhere north of 5,000 acres (30 miles from New York City).
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The grounds covered somewhere north of 5,000 acres (30 miles from New York City).
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The footprint that once held only one single wealthy family’s second and third houses is now home to over 1,000 homes housing 30,000 people and 500 businesses employing 10,000.
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Every single time I drive past that house I first thing of the “robber barons” of the late 1800s and early 1900s who were able to amass inconceivable wealth by virtue of unregulated businesses and zero personal income taxes.
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And then I flash to today and think of how we have come full circle back to that kind of disparity.
Capitalism breaks. It is fundamentally unfair and that imbalance worsens as it runs. It is an accelerometer, a centrifuge.
Wealth is bled from poor to the rich.
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Capitalism breaks. It is fundamentally unfair and that imbalance worsens as it runs. It is an accelerometer, a centrifuge.
Wealth is bled from poor to the rich.
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And than capitalism is either reined in or fails.
It is either checked hard by regulation or violence. Regulation or revolution.
It feels to me like we are past the red line. Too much concentrated among too few.
And no apparent willingness to regulate.
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It is either checked hard by regulation or violence. Regulation or revolution.
It feels to me like we are past the red line. Too much concentrated among too few.
And no apparent willingness to regulate.
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Anyway, this little stone house is awesome.
It is amazingly quaint. It’s a tiny little 3 bedroom. 100 years old.
I can relate to this little house.
There is something to be said for the “just big enough house” but that’s a discussion for another day.
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It is amazingly quaint. It’s a tiny little 3 bedroom. 100 years old.
I can relate to this little house.
There is something to be said for the “just big enough house” but that’s a discussion for another day.
//
*1,000 homes, 3,000 people. Not 30,000.
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