5 ms·

Robber barons bought dozens of medieval European buildings – where are they now?

98 points by samclemens 11y ago

PeterWhittaker 11y ago
Odd article, would benefit from the word "American" at the beginning of the headline: It concerns buildings moved from Europe to the US in the 19thC and early 20thC by fantastically wealthy Americans.
- ogreveins 11y ago
  Honest question, were there robber barons besides the famous ones in the US?
  - danielvf 11y ago
    Oh yes. The term came from the late Middle Ages when some people with a castle and soldiers were essentially thieves with open power and quasi legal cover. Their primary income was what they took, not taxes from lands they ruled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron The Rhine river hills are covered with the castles of robber barons who took protection money from ships. I had ancestors who lived in Central Europe who lived near enough to a robber baron. From time to time, the baron's men would ride out from their castle and steal everything they could carry from neighboring villages.
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      > Their primary income was what they took, not taxes from lands they ruled. > The Rhine river hills are covered with the castles of robber barons who took protection money from ships. How exactly does this differ from "taxing"?
      - taejo 11y ago
        Because they took money from merchant ships instead of peasants, where barons are supposed to get their taxes :/ (Actually, shipping tolls on the Rhine were supposed to be set according to guidelines set by the Holy Roman Emperor; the robber barons violated these guidelines)
      - danielvf 11y ago
        In both cases there was no rulership going on, and in both cases the robbery being done was in areas not under the robbers baron's de-jure authority.
        thaumasiotes 11y ago
        When you build your own castle and set up toll stations on roads and rivers, there is rulership going on. You're it! The wikipedia article suggests that the robber barons weren't difficult to stamp out, because they lived openly in giant castles. They existed because there wasn't a government above them to squash them. Filling a power vacuum doesn't make you a bandit, it makes you a warlord.
      - oxide 11y ago
        taking something called "protection money" sounds like extortion to me, but now we're splitting hairs.
      - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
        You get something back from taxes - things like health care (in Europe at least), infrastructure, R&D investment, education, and so on. Political systems that don't have proper checks and balances always devolve to caste banditry - which is not quite the same thing as getting something useful for your money.
        thaumasiotes 11y ago
        This does not reflect any understanding of taxes before, say, the 19th or 20th century. Hammurabi certainly didn't devote his funds to public health care or public education. Infrastructure, yes. R&D... probably not. Monuments, public religion, and the military would have figured in his budget. What you get back from taxes is stability. If robber barons kept ships from being attacked (other than by themselves) along their stretch of the river, they were fulfilling the necessary function of a taxing agent.
  - leoc 11y ago
    Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron . They probably built dozens of medieval European buildings...
  - pavlov 11y ago
    A hundred years ago there were rubber barons in Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rubber_boom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rubber_boom
zach 11y ago
And here I thought this only happened in Gargoyles. Cultural appropriation has never since been this visceral. I was fascinated by the description of 10,000+ pieces of a monastery in a warehouse. It seems like such a perfect problem for modern technology. If anyone has any such stories of ruins being reconstructed in computers, please share.
- unbudgingprawn 11y ago
  The city of Dresden rebuilt a destroyed cathedral from the ruins. I believe that they used as much original material as possible. The entire city is amazing, but checkout the Frauenkirche http://www.goethe.de/kue/flm/prj/kub/std/en3982506.htm http://www.goethe.de/kue/flm/prj/kub/std/en3982506.htm http://www.frauenkirche-dresden.de/en/building/reconstruction/ http://www.frauenkirche-dresden.de/en/building/reconstructio...
- Qworg 11y ago
  After spending some time in Turkey, I'm fascinated by this problem as well. I've not seen anything though. My thought is scan all of the rubble and have the computer attempt a best fit.
  - Someone 11y ago
    That has been attempted for a Roman world map. See http://formaurbis.stanford.edu/docs/FURdb.html http://formaurbis.stanford.edu/docs/FURdb.html, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forma_Urbis_Romae https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forma_Urbis_Romae (unfortunately, most of that map likely is lost forever, so it's reconstruction will remain fragmentary) "computer reconstruction of pottery" also gives several papers on the subject.
  - a3n 11y ago
    Reconstructing shredded Stazi documents is a similar problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Reassembling_the_destroyed_files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Reassembling_the_destroy...
- kspaans 11y ago
strictnein 11y ago
Off topic, but in the book Snow Crash, weren't the Japanese doing this with prestigious colleges and the like? Moving them brick by brick to Japan? Or was that a completely different book?
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  That doesn't ring any bells to me as a plot element from Snow Crash. There was Reverend Bob Rife's aircraft carrier, but that's the only re-appropriated artifact I recall.
  - fit2rule 11y ago
    I seem to remember a few bridges being cyberpunked.
nemo 11y ago
Hearst's papers were one of the chief propaganda outlets deceiving the American public into the Spanish American War. After he got his war he turned to pillaging Spanish cultural treasures and justified it as a jobs program. Wow.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  It's funny - in a historical context - to see Travis Kalanick called "One of the most ethically challenged men in Silicon Valley", read about Vinod Khosla getting roasted for closing his private beach, or watch Paul Graham get skewered for arguing that unionized industries ought to be disrupted by startups on Twitter. Compared to Gilded Age magnates, pretty much everyone in the tech industry is a saint. Other choice deeds of Gilded Age personalities: Jay Gould would manipulate the stock market at will, tried to corner the market in Gold, and installed his cronies in the New York government in exchange for directorships in his railroads [1]. Leland Stanford supported immigration restrictions on Chinese in his role as governor, and simultaneously employed thousands of them working in near-slave conditions on the railroad [2]. Henry Clay Frick hired an armed militia to disperse striking workers, which led to an actual firefight between them and the picket line [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Stanford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Stanford [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike
  - gozo 11y ago
    So? That seems more like a reason to question the people that wields power more than anything. What's dangerous with "startup royalty" is that they have a following while they are almost never challenged on what they really know. Rarely do we see them answer tough questions, respond in debates or anything else that would rapidly demonstrate the limits of their knowledge. Of course Paul Graham can complain about unions because he will never have to explain or stand for what he means in any meaningful sense of the words. Not even politicians can get away with that. It's like the worst form of meritocracy, the one that coined the phrase, when your merit is unrelated to your power. Our world is being formed by hunches.
iamthepieman 11y ago
For the not quite so insanely wealthy there was always the option to construct a building that only looked like it had been imported from europe[1] See just below the first picture of the actual castle in that link. I visited the Hammond castle two summers ago and it's exactly what you would expect from a millionaire playboy inventor. Parts of it look like something from a steampunk convention. [1]http://www.travelswithnathaniel.com/2012/07/tour-hammond-castle-museum-in.html http://www.travelswithnathaniel.com/2012/07/tour-hammond-cas...
- myNXTact 11y ago
  Ha ha Tonka state park in southern Missouri is an example of rich man building his own castle.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha_Ha_Tonka_State_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha_Ha_Tonka_State_Park
simonw 11y ago
This was absolutely fascinating. If you haven't been, I thoroughly recommend taking a trip to Hearst Castle (a lovely drive down the pacific coast highway) which is a monument to bought/stolen European antiquities.

98 points by samclemens 11y ago

Odd article, would benefit from the word "American" at the beginning of the headline: It concerns buildings moved from Europe to the US in the 19thC and early 20thC by fantastically wealthy Americans.

ogreveins 11y ago
Honest question, were there robber barons besides the famous ones in the US?
- danielvf 11y ago
  Oh yes. The term came from the late Middle Ages when some people with a castle and soldiers were essentially thieves with open power and quasi legal cover. Their primary income was what they took, not taxes from lands they ruled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron The Rhine river hills are covered with the castles of robber barons who took protection money from ships. I had ancestors who lived in Central Europe who lived near enough to a robber baron. From time to time, the baron's men would ride out from their castle and steal everything they could carry from neighboring villages.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    > Their primary income was what they took, not taxes from lands they ruled. > The Rhine river hills are covered with the castles of robber barons who took protection money from ships. How exactly does this differ from "taxing"?
    - taejo 11y ago
      Because they took money from merchant ships instead of peasants, where barons are supposed to get their taxes :/ (Actually, shipping tolls on the Rhine were supposed to be set according to guidelines set by the Holy Roman Emperor; the robber barons violated these guidelines)
    - danielvf 11y ago
      In both cases there was no rulership going on, and in both cases the robbery being done was in areas not under the robbers baron's de-jure authority.
      - thaumasiotes 11y ago
        When you build your own castle and set up toll stations on roads and rivers, there is rulership going on. You're it! The wikipedia article suggests that the robber barons weren't difficult to stamp out, because they lived openly in giant castles. They existed because there wasn't a government above them to squash them. Filling a power vacuum doesn't make you a bandit, it makes you a warlord.
    - oxide 11y ago
      taking something called "protection money" sounds like extortion to me, but now we're splitting hairs.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      You get something back from taxes - things like health care (in Europe at least), infrastructure, R&D investment, education, and so on. Political systems that don't have proper checks and balances always devolve to caste banditry - which is not quite the same thing as getting something useful for your money.
      - thaumasiotes 11y ago
        This does not reflect any understanding of taxes before, say, the 19th or 20th century. Hammurabi certainly didn't devote his funds to public health care or public education. Infrastructure, yes. R&D... probably not. Monuments, public religion, and the military would have figured in his budget. What you get back from taxes is stability. If robber barons kept ships from being attacked (other than by themselves) along their stretch of the river, they were fulfilling the necessary function of a taxing agent.
- leoc 11y ago
  Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron . They probably built dozens of medieval European buildings...
- pavlov 11y ago
  A hundred years ago there were rubber barons in Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rubber_boom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rubber_boom

zach 11y ago

And here I thought this only happened in Gargoyles. Cultural appropriation has never since been this visceral. I was fascinated by the description of 10,000+ pieces of a monastery in a warehouse. It seems like such a perfect problem for modern technology. If anyone has any such stories of ruins being reconstructed in computers, please share.

unbudgingprawn 11y ago
The city of Dresden rebuilt a destroyed cathedral from the ruins. I believe that they used as much original material as possible. The entire city is amazing, but checkout the Frauenkirche http://www.goethe.de/kue/flm/prj/kub/std/en3982506.htm http://www.goethe.de/kue/flm/prj/kub/std/en3982506.htm http://www.frauenkirche-dresden.de/en/building/reconstruction/ http://www.frauenkirche-dresden.de/en/building/reconstructio...
Qworg 11y ago
After spending some time in Turkey, I'm fascinated by this problem as well. I've not seen anything though. My thought is scan all of the rubble and have the computer attempt a best fit.
- Someone 11y ago
  That has been attempted for a Roman world map. See http://formaurbis.stanford.edu/docs/FURdb.html http://formaurbis.stanford.edu/docs/FURdb.html, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forma_Urbis_Romae https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forma_Urbis_Romae (unfortunately, most of that map likely is lost forever, so it's reconstruction will remain fragmentary) "computer reconstruction of pottery" also gives several papers on the subject.
- a3n 11y ago
  Reconstructing shredded Stazi documents is a similar problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Reassembling_the_destroyed_files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Reassembling_the_destroy...
kspaans 11y ago

strictnein 11y ago

Off topic, but in the book Snow Crash, weren't the Japanese doing this with prestigious colleges and the like? Moving them brick by brick to Japan? Or was that a completely different book?

dredmorbius 11y ago
That doesn't ring any bells to me as a plot element from Snow Crash. There was Reverend Bob Rife's aircraft carrier, but that's the only re-appropriated artifact I recall.
- fit2rule 11y ago
  I seem to remember a few bridges being cyberpunked.

nemo 11y ago

Hearst's papers were one of the chief propaganda outlets deceiving the American public into the Spanish American War. After he got his war he turned to pillaging Spanish cultural treasures and justified it as a jobs program. Wow.

nostrademons 11y ago
It's funny - in a historical context - to see Travis Kalanick called "One of the most ethically challenged men in Silicon Valley", read about Vinod Khosla getting roasted for closing his private beach, or watch Paul Graham get skewered for arguing that unionized industries ought to be disrupted by startups on Twitter. Compared to Gilded Age magnates, pretty much everyone in the tech industry is a saint. Other choice deeds of Gilded Age personalities: Jay Gould would manipulate the stock market at will, tried to corner the market in Gold, and installed his cronies in the New York government in exchange for directorships in his railroads [1]. Leland Stanford supported immigration restrictions on Chinese in his role as governor, and simultaneously employed thousands of them working in near-slave conditions on the railroad [2]. Henry Clay Frick hired an armed militia to disperse striking workers, which led to an actual firefight between them and the picket line [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Stanford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Stanford [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike
- gozo 11y ago
  So? That seems more like a reason to question the people that wields power more than anything. What's dangerous with "startup royalty" is that they have a following while they are almost never challenged on what they really know. Rarely do we see them answer tough questions, respond in debates or anything else that would rapidly demonstrate the limits of their knowledge. Of course Paul Graham can complain about unions because he will never have to explain or stand for what he means in any meaningful sense of the words. Not even politicians can get away with that. It's like the worst form of meritocracy, the one that coined the phrase, when your merit is unrelated to your power. Our world is being formed by hunches.

iamthepieman 11y ago

For the not quite so insanely wealthy there was always the option to construct a building that only looked like it had been imported from europe[1] See just below the first picture of the actual castle in that link. I visited the Hammond castle two summers ago and it's exactly what you would expect from a millionaire playboy inventor. Parts of it look like something from a steampunk convention. [1]http://www.travelswithnathaniel.com/2012/07/tour-hammond-castle-museum-in.html http://www.travelswithnathaniel.com/2012/07/tour-hammond-cas...

myNXTact 11y ago
Ha ha Tonka state park in southern Missouri is an example of rich man building his own castle.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha_Ha_Tonka_State_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha_Ha_Tonka_State_Park

simonw 11y ago

This was absolutely fascinating. If you haven't been, I thoroughly recommend taking a trip to Hearst Castle (a lovely drive down the pacific coast highway) which is a monument to bought/stolen European antiquities.