I only skimmed the article, but my thoughts are similar to yours. Rockefeller had four houses that I know of—and likely owned a few more. He had thousands of acres of real estate all over the place. His private mansion had 40 rooms, and crawled with servants. Iirc, the ‘family estate,’ was even bigger. The FL mansion was right on the beach.
Rockefeller had a vallet, a butler, and enough lesser servants to attend a small army. He was the country’s first billionaire [that was in 30s money; it would be worth exponentially more now.)
I’m not materialistic enough to want that lifestyle. Otoh, I’m sane enough to know Rockefeller was richer than I am.
Stuff doesn’t make wealth. My wife and I now have 4 cars. This was a sign of wealth not too long ago. (Especially since among them is a BMW and a Mercedes). Our cars are basically worthless.
Today’s version of wealth is cloudy and confusing. Wealth comes in few forms:
Real Property. Land, homes. And in differing degrees of arrability and appeal.
Power. Being so busy running major projects that you need staff to run your affairs at your whim.
The rest is chaff. Our lives are full of chaff.