The 17,000-square-foot house, built in 1932, was two stories, with eight bathrooms, an in-ground pool and an elevator.
It was located in a 77 acre very exclusive development. The orginal plan was to renovate but after beginning it was decided to raze the structure and rebuild. Nothing unusual about that, imo when money is no objective.
My daughter and her husband just did the same thing on a much smaller scale. They bought a house, for the property ,and intended to do a complete model. They wound up tearing down the entire house because the foundation couldn’t support the new structure. It would have cost them a lot more to remodel then build from scratch and they now have a house worth almost triple what they originally paid for the smaller house.