I was in Newport, Rhode Island this past weekend. Beautiful place, visit if you can. There are a large quantity of distinctive 19th Century mansions around this area, long a summer resort for America's wealthiest families. Me and better half of me toured a few. As we would say in the hood, these cribs were laced. With all that expensive Manhattan shit! Considering the details and costly materials, you have to think it would cost a gigantic fortune to construct homes like these today. Even though we have cheaper materials, new building methods, advanced construction machines, CAD, etc. the marble, the craftsmanship, the patience...all very expensive and in short supply.
Take The Elms, for example, pictured above. The Elms was built by Mr. Edward J. Berwind of Philadelphia. After a ten year stint with the Navy, Berwind went on to get busy in the promising coal mining business. Backed up by J. P. Morgan, by the 1890s he built a vast network of anti-union coal mining operations throughout Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia. Working conditions were, as you can imagine, awful.
Berwind built, in addition to this house in Newport among other homes, a couple of mining towns named after himself. Berwind, West Virginia and Windber, Pennsylvania. The Berwind Family which inherited the founder's business and still own it today, have taken little interest in either towns general welfare. Today these towns are places of massive population decline and absolute soul crushing white poverty. The family has largely moved on from coal into chemicals and other commercial products, real estate and private equity. The family members keep a low profile, like most families of this sort. They maintain a family office to manage their wealth, estimated today to be possibly two or three billion and spread out among many of them with several distinct branches.
The Elms was completed in 1901 for about $1.4 million. That's about $38 million today. Today, $1.4 million will buy a nicely sized upper middle-class home on small lot in Newport. Certainly nothing like The Elms. Berwind died in 1936 and left the mansion to his sister Julia. Julia Berwind was something of an eccentric, keeping the house running normally through the Depression and the War. After she died in 1961, the House was made a museum and landmarked.
To recap, guy built a successful business, erected a lavish Summer manse near the beach, and founded a couple of towns in Appalachia. When he dies he leaves the business to his children, the manse to his little sister, and the towns, which did the hard work to bring him his wealth, zilch.
In the decades that followed, no matter if the taxes were Truman high or Bush low, the towns shrank and poverty prevailed. No matter when the social services were LBJ generous or Reagan spartan, decline and blight continued. Ironically, Windber, Pennsylvania and its surrounding county voted for Donald Trump by almost 80% of the vote. In Berwind, WV even more.