The Breakers

 A seaside cottage would hardly be the first place most people would think of when asked where one might find what is arguably the most opulent library in America. But if that “cottage” were built during the height of the Gilded Age by one of America’s 19th Century titans of industry, then it should come as less of a surprise. For the ultra-rich in the late 1800s, it was a time when one-upmanship ran rampant, no expense was spared, and the phrase conspicuous consumption was coined.