And now for something completely different: real estate

A friend has sent along this article on Greenwich’s (and Palm Beach’s past. Fun read.

The Gilded Age: Greenwich & Palm Beach

 Although Ocean Boulevard’s recent nine-figure real estate sales overshadow Indian Road or John Street asking prices, in 1903 it was Greenwich’s “salubrious ground where champagne flowed …” having reimagined itself to be somewhere in the Cotswold Hills. With the weekly Greenwich Graphicboasting “more millionaire subscribers than anywhere in the United States,” the building of quintessential country estates in picturesque settings with boxwood gardens took hold, turning farms into aristocratic enclaves “guarded from every nuisance.” The transformation of the old Bush Farm into Belle Haven was regarded “the opening wedge,” the genesis of Greenwich’s real estate operations that led to a population of 15,000 genteel summer suburbanites. Other residential centers also flourished, “unmarred by factory or shanty,” like Byram Shore, Sound Beach Park, and Riverside, according to the New York Daily Tribune.

(“Sound Beach Park” was renamed Old Greenwich early in the last century after locals determined that the word “beach” was attracting too many undesireable day-trippers. So that much hasn’t changed.)