A different housing bubble but the same housing trouble

Source: New York Times

Bloomberg View’s excellent economic history blog tells of an earlier housing bubble, from the same country and era that brought us tulip-mania. This bubble concerned 17th-century Dutch dollhouses, which were both sentimentally and financially a precursor to the recent American housing bust: [The dollhouses] were exact replicas, miniature rooms furnished with fine Dutch craftsmanship — tiny silver platters in the kitchen, inlaid walnut sideboards in the hall. … The dollhouses were “not playthings but miniature memorials, records of dearly beloved objects,” according to Witold Rybczynski, author of “Home: A Short History of an Idea.” He believes the bourgeois Dutch invented the very idea of “home.” They brought “together the meaning of house and of household, of dwelling and of refuge, of ownership and of affection,” he wrote. “You could walk out of the house, but you always returned home.” … [The dollhouses] were also investments in themselves. They were commissioned and sold at auction, in the same way as oil paintings and other luxury crafts. Collectors tracked their worth as investments in account books. They were listed as assets in dowries. One collector charged admission to visitors. A dollhouse owned by an Amsterdam merchant’s wife named Petronella Oortman, which is displayed at the Rijksmuseum, was worth almost the price of an actual canal house. I wonder: Can dollhouses be foreclosed upon?

URL to original article: http://www.builderonline.com/builder-pulse/a-different-housing-bubble-but-the-same-housing-trouble.aspx?cid=BP:061812:JUMP

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