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While both East and West Egg are wealthy communities, families with inherited wealth, or “old money,” live in the more fashionable East Egg. In West Egg, by contrast, residents whose wealth is new, like Gatsby, conspicuously mimic European aristocracy to appear established. Gatsby’s house is modeled on the Hotel de Ville (French for city hall) in Normandy, France, and was built by a brewer who offered to pay the neighbors to live in thatched cottages, like peasants. While many of the descriptions of the houses in the novel seem over the top, they are in fact based on real mansions that existed on Long Island in the 1920s. For example, an estate named Harbor Hill was also modeled on Hotels de Ville, and included farms, a blacksmith, a casino, and Turkish baths on its 650 acres. Despite such opulent displays of wealth, the novel suggests that the city, the suburbs, and the valley of ashes all share a sense of spiritual desolation and psychological desperation. In the end, then, it seems to matter little where the characters find themselves along the corridor between New York and the twin Eggs. Nobody in
