If you need proof that we are indeed living in the second Gilded Age, look no further than the real estate listing for a 15,000-square-foot mansion on Katama Bay that sold this month for a whopping $37.5 million. That makes this property the highest single residential sale ever on an Island that already ranks as one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country.
Designed by Vineyard architect Patrick Ahearn, the Witchwood Lane estate has a swimming pool, a deep-water pier, and a bowling alley. A separate drive-through carriage house has two garages, two apartments, and a full kitchen.
“Inspired by ‘The Great Gatsby,’ this new homestead recalls the glamour, style, and grace of the 1920s even before one sees it,” the architectural firm gushes on its website. “That’s due to a dramatic approach down a long curving drive, through a porte-cochère, and into an arrival court. Only from here does the stately gambrel-roofed manor truly reveal itself.”
The property also “truly reveals itself” as an emblem of a moment in American history when the wealth gap is on par with the stark divisions that defined the age of the robber barons of the “Gilded Age” –– a term coined by Mark Twain to capture the thin veneer of prosperity that helped only the top percentile of the American economy back then. It is hard not to see parallels to today.
Even in the White House, which John Quincy Adams called “the people’s house,” President Donald Trump has pooled money from American billionaires to pay for the construction of a $300 million ballroom. He has also remodeled the bathroom of the White House’s historic Lincoln Bedroom by replacing period green tile with shiny new marble and glistening gold fixtures. Trump seems to see no irony in the fact that he is celebrating this kind of opulence on his own social media even while pushing for and presiding over a gutting of social services that will impact the poorest people in America, and through the gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which deeply affects the poorest people in the world. Adding a haunting quality to all this, Trump held a Halloween party with a “Great Gatsby” theme just hours before he put on hold funding for the SNAP benefits that provide food for millions of Americans.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
For those of who live on Martha’s Vineyard, this jarring age of inequity surrounds us every day. A labor force that struggles to find affordable housing and reliable healthcare depends on the vast wealth of the modern robber barons, and all the money that pours into the Island. The theme of the Gilded Age has even produced a recent HBO hit, and inspired the controversial Polo Ralph Lauren for Oak Bluffs line of clothing, which honors a rich Black heritage on the Island. This should make us all stop for a moment and be more reflective about our history, and how our own Island represents the stunning inequity that defines the age we live in and the Island we live on.
To intelligently consider the impact of all this inequity, and ponder how best to address it, will require knowing our history.
One slice of history that can help us understand what the Gilded Age looked like on Martha’s Vineyard is being featured in an exhibit at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, “The Lost History of Innisfail.” The exhibit, which is featured on the cover of our Community section this week, tells the story of how the Vineyard was transformed from an economy centered on the whaling industry to a tourist destination that, even by the end of the 19th century, was attracting top celebrities and titans of business. That Gilded Age, from about 1870 to 1910, traces the brief glory of the mansion known as Innisfail on the Lagoon, in an area of what is today Vineyard Haven. The grand architecture of Innisfail is only a memory now, as it was consumed by a massive fire in 1906.
And somewhere in the smoldering embers of that fire — as the Gilded Age gave way to the Roaring Twenties and then tumbled into the stock market crash that gave us the Great Depression — is a glimpse of a pattern of history. And it is worth us all studying up on how the Gilded Age gave way to the arc of history that brought the Progressive Era and eventually the New Deal.
The American Prospect magazine recently commented on the Progressive Era, stating in a lead essay, “Those years saw countless changes in the rules of economic life, as well as new taxes and social spending that gave the great majority of Americans a better life. But behind the specific reforms was a common recognition — a collective revulsion against the privileges of great wealth allied with great power. The challenge now is to mobilize that kind of moral sentiment on behalf of a new age of reform.”
Some political observers see a stirring of that kind of reform through the eyes of young voters, who are shifting noticeably to the left. The public sentiment that capitalism is failing Gen Z, or those born after 1997, is so common that even conservatives like Peter Thiel, a billionaire venture capitalist and supporter of Trump, are commenting on the trend. Thiel and others suggest that this trend accounts for the unlikely rise of Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, who was elected mayor of New York City this month. Drawing on support from young voters who feel increasingly failed by the unbridled capitalism that defines the day, Mamdani was swept in with a mandate for progressive change. Mamdani definitely has his critics, and time will tell whether he can deliver on promises. But there is no question that he has ushered in an open call for greater equity through new tax policies and social service programs that will focus on affordability for a sector of the economy, particularly his young voters and a vanishing middle class that has been all but forgotten.
Right here, closer to home, there are a myriad of examples of similarly progressive economic initiatives on Martha’s Vineyard intended to address inequity. There is a generous community of philanthropists who have stepped up to help build a safety net, from the Island Housing Trust to Island Food Pantry, to the stunning success of Martha’s Vineyard Community Services and the support it provides to every corner of the Island. And there is a progressive-minded community spirit in which hard-working people roll up their sleeves every day to help others.
So when you are taking in the museum exhibit on the “Lost History of Innisfail,” consider that there is a message for America’s economic future in those old black-and-white photographs documenting the sunset on the Gilded Age, and perhaps a road map for change that can lead us into a more sustainable and equitable future.
We are hoping that this is where America can find itself headed, and where the Island and its proud community spirit might serve as a steady beacon guiding us toward change.
What hypocrisy! You bash the wealthy and then state “There is a generous community of philanthropists who have stepped up to help build a safety net”. There is no philanthropy without wealth! Who do you think built our hospital? Yes many people contributed but it was the handful that donated millions out of their own pockets that make the project happen. Who do you think pays the bulk of our taxes yet require few municipal services? It’s not the Mamdani folks who will be donating at the Possible Dreams auction next Summer. When did success become a bad word? More importantly why isn’t your subscription free? You surely don’t need the wealth, right?
USAID budget went from 44 billion to 31 billion, so still plenty of money. Funds allocated for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives, such as a DEI musical in Ireland ($70,000) or “transgender opera” in Colombia ($47,000). Projects aimed at promoting LGBTQ+ rights, climate action, or gender equality in various countries have been labeled as “woke excesses” and of no value to American taxpayers. A large percentage of the budget goes to Washington-based contractors and administrative overhead, rather than directly to those in need. Instances of aid money being diverted to terrorist organizations (over $9 million in one case in Syria) or wasted through mismanagement (donated drugs expiring in warehouses) have been cited as evidence of a lack of oversight.
As for the 35-million-dollar home, there are many multimillion-dollar homes on MV because it is a rich man’s ghetto and a vacation destination. Why would we envy someone else’s fortune and get stuck in the Soviet narrative of ‘all sisters get earrings’? As for young voters who feel increasingly failed by the unbridled capitalism that defines the day, they have learned nothing in school and can’t get jobs with degrees in feminist studies. Engineers from Purdue and Computer Scientists from Caltech will be just fine as will Asian kids who learn useful stuff. There will always be inequity in a Capitalist society but equity of opportunity exists in the USA.
This comic is becoming more like Pravda every week.
You have to squeeze President Trumps name into a house purchase.
Mad comics stuff
Oh please! This opinion piece did not bash the wealthy. Why would it have mentioned philanthropy if bashing the wealthy is the purpose? Only a biased person believes that unchecked capitalism doesn’t result in a threatening resource imbalance. If we want a stable capitalist society, we must have a strong middle class. Simple.
Anyone who thinks the best way to run a society is to have a small sliver of the population control the wealth and power has not been learning from history. The reality is that this has failed time and time again. The most prosperous countries in the history of the planet are the one’s with the highest taxation rates. The Sumerians and Egyptians first came up with taxes in about 3,000 BCE. They became the most prosperous civilizations of their time, as did the Romans millennia later. Indeed, today, many of the most prosperous and most content countries have the highest tax rates. To depend on billionaires to throw a few crumbs from the banquet they have amassed from the working class back to them is cruel at best. Federal governments with the power to tax and distribute wealth is philanthropy at it’s best. Having billionaires pony up $300 million to build a gilded “ballroom” for a lying buffoon in the hope of currying favor so they can get even richer is ludicrous. The current kakistocracy that is destroying the foundations of our republic will not stop unless we stop it. We still have the right to vote..
This argument leans on claims about history and taxation that don’t hold up to factual scrutiny.
Pointing to Sumerians, Egyptians, or Romans as proof that high taxes create prosperity ignores that those civilizations were built on conquest, extraction, and rigid hierarchies — not anything resembling modern economic policy. Their wealth came from controlling territory and labor, not redistributing resources in a democratic sense.
It’s also inaccurate to claim that today’s “most prosperous” nations simply tax the most. Prosperity is shaped by innovation, trade, regulatory stability, education, and demographic strength. Switzerland, Singapore, and Ireland, for instance, pair relatively low corporate tax rates with strong economic performance, while several high-tax countries face slow growth and aging populations. The relationship is complex, not ideological.
The dismissal of philanthropy likewise overlooks its scale. In the United States, charitable giving exceeds $550 billion annually, supporting housing, food security, mental health care, and emergency assistance that government programs often cannot deliver efficiently. On Martha’s Vineyard, essential services such as Island Food Pantry, MV Community Services, and IHT rely heavily on private donors, not federal redistribution.
Criticizing wealth is fair, but reducing history to “high taxes equal prosperity” isn’t supported by evidence — past or present.
Billionaires and millionaires are the ones who create businesses that create jobs for the working class. they do not make their money off the backs of workers. Indeed they provide work for people so that they can live a decent life. Those wealthy people also pay most of the taxes to the governments and they also are huge donors to philanthropy. Sumerians and Egyptians had a caste system, used slaves and oppressed the poor. Wealth is relative. I am certain that MrKeller would be looked at as very wealthy to someone in Haiti or Rwanda.
Or, the billionaires buy people like trump to create a game where only they win and regular folks lose.
How many companies have moved operations to avoid unions? Or how about the coal and oil barons who have been working in near secrecy to foist nuclear on the world: surprise! You’re now paying 50 cents a kw and what about the nuclear waste? It has the potential to destroy our world.
You’re kidding about how altruistic billionaires are, right? They just got their money by creating jobs and making everyone happy. Yeah, right… And the money comes from where ? The Egyptians treated their slaves pretty well. As far as I can tell many of them lived relatively better lives than many minimum wage earners do today. Does anyone think the current regime and the billionaire class is not actively suppressing the poor ? We only need to look at the debates over the minimum wage to answer that question. If you read any of the books that are disliked by the current regime you will pretty quickly realize that this country was built on slavery. Besides, what’s wrong with slavery-? – It’s condoned by god herself after all. https://michaelpahl.com/2017/01/27/the-bible-is-clear-god-endorses-slavery/– The Israelites could even sell their daughters into slavery https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2021%3A7-11&version=NLT. I hope no one accuses me of being antisemitic for mentioning that, or accuses me of hating America because I don’t have psychogenic amnesia about the role of slavery in this country.
Do billionaires not bleed and weep like the rest of us? Are they not human in their souls? Do they not deserve the same love, compassion, and understanding that all of us deserve?
This response to Andrew seems to mix together ideas that don’t actually address the article or the comment it was replying to.
Suggesting that “Egyptians treated their slaves pretty well” isn’t just historically inaccurate — it has nothing to do with a discussion about modern inequality on Martha’s Vineyard. Invoking ancient slavery or biblical passages doesn’t shed any meaningful light on current debates about wages, housing, or economic opportunity in 2025. It simply drags the conversation away from the real issues the article raised.
No one is denying that America’s history includes slavery or that inequity still exists. Acknowledging that isn’t the same thing as claiming that today’s business owners or wealthy individuals are “actively suppressing the poor.” Those are huge leaps that bypass the nuance needed to talk about how people actually live and work on the Island.
Debates over minimum wage, taxation, or social services are legitimate, but they deserve to be grounded in present-day facts, not comparisons between ancient servitude and modern jobs.
Andrew’s original point — that wealth creation, taxation, and philanthropy play complex roles in our economy — can be debated on its merits.
Shifting the conversation to unrelated historical analogies doesn’t move that discussion forward or help us address the Island’s real challenges.
Yet again the MV Times allows racist comments as long as they are phrased “just so”. Pointing out the racist comment specifically is still forbidden I am sure so I will hope those with critical thinking skills can figure out which comment I am referring to. Do better MV Times.
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