Vanity of vanities. All is vanities.
Who loves a story of a greedy villain getting his comeuppance? I do! I do! Plenty of that in the news today.
The business section of the New York Times has wonderful articles about the uber-rich. A real estate agent from Greenwich blogs about their super big houses and what happens to the homes when the owners inevitably end up in prison.
Mr. Fountain likes to point to the prominent Greenwich characters in the public spotlight as part of the problem. Topping Mr. Fountain’s list of homeowners are Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund executive now serving an 11-year prison sentence on charges of insider trading, and Frederic A. Bourke Jr., co-founder of Dooney & Bourke, the high-end handbag accessories store, who has just been imprisoned for bribery and whose house is on the market for $13 million.
He also likes to skewer Walter Noel, a founder of Fairfield Greenwich, the investment firm that raised more than $8 billion for Mr. Madoff and subsequently became the target of investigations. Mr. Noel’s 175 Round Hill address is just across the road from Mr. Bourke’s home. The estate of Steven A. Cohen, whose hedge fund pleaded guilty to insider trading charges in November, is six miles east of Round Hill Road.
On the same page, another article talks about the boost in sales of big homes. (Not sure how both articles can be true at the same time.) The latest “must-haves” in homes for the rich include a “dirty” kitchen, a mud-room with laundry facilities, and master bathrooms that are larger than my first apartment.
The Governor of Virginia and his wife.
Beyond huge bathrooms and mega mudrooms, what’s hip in homes for the rich these days? New homes that look like they’re old. I love mocking McMansions.
Apt. 11d 
having grown up in greenwich, I adore these articles. north st, stanwich, round hill, lake and maple. all the streets you would take out of towners on drives, so they could gawk at the obsceneness of the whole thing.
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laura said:
“The latest “must-haves” in homes for the rich include a “dirty” kitchen, a mud-room with laundry facilities, and master bathrooms that are larger than my first apartment.”
The second kitchen idea is one that I’ve heard of being important for the Asian market on the West Coast (you have a fancy Western show kitchen, plus a working Asian kitchen where stuff actually gets cooked). I’ve also seen it mentioned in a book on French country kitchens and in a description of an Italian-American home (Home Comforts?). The drive toward precious materials in kitchens probably has something to do with it. Who wants tomato spatters within yards of their $100 a square foot white marble countertops? (Here’s an idea–how about using more functional materials?)
I don’t think a mudroom with laundry is crazy. That’s more or less what my grandma has in their late 1950s ranch house, although they call it a utility room. You walk in the back door after doing mucky farm chores, drop clothes in passing into the washer, and take a shower in the adjoining bathroom–it’s about 10 steps from door to shower, with the washer on the way. Very sensible. In our current house, I really appreciate the fact that as you come in from the garage, the laundry room is right there on your left, so if there are any outdoor items that need to be flung into the washer, it’s very simple to do so.
I’m not going to tell you how big our circa 1991 master bath is. Let’s just say that I’ve occasionally wondered if we could carve out part of it as an office for my husband. I am warming up to the functionality of it, although I wish that the original owners hadn’t been so into purple swirled faux marble.
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