Tumblr Thread: The Big, Weird Empty Mansions of Rich People

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  • 01
    Purple - 501337 Seguir i can understand the use of large house for a family but what do those single rich feks with the goddamn true mansions do with all that space exactly? like let's table all valid criticisms of the spending and constructing of them aside and just focus on what exactly you do with that space
  • 02
    Font - chefboyard-bag Seguir As a real estate photographer I can tell you with a confidence that most of that space is entirely unused. Extra kitchens which have never seen a meal, billiards rooms with untouched felt, an office that no one has ever worked in, a second, or third family room, that no family member has spent any significant amount of time in. I once shot a place with a walk-in closet so large the dude had an 8-person dining room table in the middle of it.. like.. no one is hanging
  • 03
    Organism - 501337 Seguir this is a fantastic answer, thank you for replying. sadly it confirmed my fears that these people are all insane severalowls Seguir Traditionally mansions and manors had a lot of space because they were the lifelong homes of multiple generations of a family (the lord and lady, their unmarried children and heirs, and various widowed aunts and in-laws), dozens of servants, and rooms or even wings set aside for a constantly rotating cast of guests who had travelled days or
  • 04
    Font - Now there's just Hank, Kate, Keighleyee, and their sterile palace. somecuttookmyurl #obviously the landed gentry had uuuuuh their own problems but at least their nonsense houses were actual homes elidyce Seguir There was also the Social Obligation Space issue. Take the Regency period, for example, because that's where my expertiese is.
  • 05
    Font - Travel was expensive, uncomfortable, tiring, and time-consuming. Multiple guest rooms were genuinely necessary if you ever wanted to see anyone who didn't live within a few miles because if your family spent two days coming to visit they weren't going to turn around and head home the same day. Social visits of multiple weeks were the norm, and even a month or two wasn't excessive if you really liked each other and wanted to hang out.
  • 06
    Font - If you were rich, there was also the House Party/Family Function/Rural Ball/Whatever obligations, where politeness actively required you to have room for everyone to sleep over, Not only that, they were all going to bring personal servants, and you had to be able to sieep them too. Anyone with the budget was socially obligated to maintain a number of spare rooms for both rich people and servants.
  • 07
    Organism - (An important indication of the Deeply Impoverished state of the Dashwood ladies in 'Sense and Sensibility' is that they have only one spare bedroom, and are thus very much socially isolated because they can't accommodate more than one visitor with no servants.) In addition to this, impoverished relations, widowed sisters or daughters with their children, aged or disabled servants and an endlessly changing number of maids, valets, nurses, governesses, etc might need to be housed tempo
  • 08
    Organism - (Sense and Sensibility again - Henry Dashwood was required by social and moral obligation to give his widowed stepmother and three half sisters a home. If they'd decided to stay at the house permanently, he and his wife would have caused a serious scandal by evicting them, which is probably why Fanny was such a bitch to them from the outset. She didn't want them to stay and had absolutely no other way of stopping them) There was a time when at least six or seven spare bedrooms was a b

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