Industrialist Isaac D. Fletcher seemed to have this competitive mindset. When he commissioned his new mansion at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 79th Street in 1897, he supposedly wanted the house to rival William K. and Alva Vanderbilt’s 1882 “petit chateau” on Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street.
https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2022/03/21/this-1899-gilded-age-fairy-tale-mansion-on-fifth-avenue-has-had-only-4-owners/