“Money and a few yards of silk can make a nobleman”. A line from a movie I watched about the Crusades.
Your right about the low profile of old money. I’ve lived in a few cities. The well to do old money families live in hidden places, drive older good quality vehicles, and don’t flaunt their wealth.
Different world now. Oligarchs and hedge fund managers with mind boggling yachts, private aircraft, mansions, and lifestyles. If you got it, flaunt it seems to be the new mantra of the famous and infamous nouveau riche.
Seeing two Bentleys and two Range Rovers parked by an old apartment complex adjacent to the old Luperon Resort was interesting. The party they were having was more interesting. Babes and bling everywhere.
I think it has always been like that. Look at millionaires row on Fifth Avenue in NYC. Many of the residential mansions now are museums and other non-residential entities, but these houses are basically on the street.
That contrast sharply with the house where William F Buckley Jr used to live. Oh sure, it has a private beach, a pool near the beach and the property is a good size. In the inside there were things like another pool in the lowest floor, a private theater, a room that had a rug of an actual bear that was hunted with his face still on it (I don't think anything scared me more than that), a grand stair case that went up and then broke into two starecaes on each side and a painting on canvas hanging in the wall where all three staircases met of Madame Patricia when she was younger and seversl other things I vaguely remember of the times I went to that house. But, from the outside the house didn't look extraordinary, from the street you can't even see the house, and no one would guess the guy living there had a direct phone number to the White House where the President of the USA dropped anything he was doing to answer his calls. The point is that Madame Patricia would be holding a small fluffy white dog in the yard (as I saw her one time I went to her house) where there was a small white sign that said "careful with the puppies" or something like that and no one would guess from the street that it was her or that she was even there. I never saw the library/home office where he used to spend a good amount of time and, in fact, died; though the official story of how he was found is slightly different from how it was in reality.
Nothing different with the DR, except there is a greater tendency to show that you're wealthy even if you're old money. But in general, there is a difference with the two.
