On Wednesday , September 21 , an abandoned mansion that may have helped inspire the expression " keeping up with the Joneses ” was put up for auction bridge , The Poughkeepsie Journalreports .
The phrase — a democratic idiom for one ’s struggle to appear as flush and successful as their peer — has undecipherable origins . Some people sayit was vulgarise by an other 20th C comic slip calledKeeping Up with the Joneses , which follow the mishap of a competitive family with rich neighbors . Still others say that it ’s based on a wealthy 19thcentury New York household — the Joneses — whose 24 - room state home , WyndclyffeCastle , was once the toast of the Hudson Valley .
locate in Rhinebeck , New York , the home was built in 1853 by New York City socialite Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones — auntie of author Edith Wharton and a relative of one of America ’s wealthy family , the Astors . It straggle across 80 Acre of land and came equipped with a boathouse , carriage houses , and other amenities .
Wharton mention Wyndclyffe in her ledger , and it ’s say that others were so awestruck by its grandeur that " keeping up with the Joneses ” was coined to relate to its owners . But after Jones ’s death in 1876 , the dimension passed through the hands of multiple owner , some of whom experience financial difficulties . Wyndclyffe was abandoned during the 1950s , and its surrounding property was later trade off in parcels . Today , the home ’s crumbling ruin pose on a flyspeck two - and - a - half - Akka plot of land — and while it was purchase by a Modern owner 2003 , the structure was never restored it to its former halo .
Today , Wyndclyffe ’s assess worth is $ 312,900 . Yesterday , the home was put up for sale at New York LaGuardia Airport Marriott Hotel in East Elmhurst , by order of U.S. Bankruptcy Court . There ’s still no word on whether anyone purchased the mansion , but sales functionary say they hope it will attract a story buff with the drive — and financial means — to reconstruct it .
“ If they have a diachronic cacoethes and the roll to fund it , they can rick it into an incredible dimension , ” auction sale house president Richard Maltz ( whose company , Maltz Auctions , is helming the sale)toldThe Wall Street Journal .
[ h / tThe Poughkeepsie Journal ]
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