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George Daynor, The Mysterious Man Who Built New Jersey’s Famous Palace Of Depression
During the Great Depression, a peculiar man with $7 in his pocket walked into a small town and built a bizarre and iconic house in the following years
Losing a fortune is a humbling and life-altering experience. It can completely ruin a person, but in some cases they find a way to pivot to something else. Such was apparently the case of the strange and eccentric George Daynor, who lost his shirt during the stock market crash of 1929 but built by hand what came to be known as the most bizarre house in the world — the Palace of Depression.
Daynor’s background is one of some mystery. He claimed to have had a number of setbacks earlier in his life, including making and losing a fortune mining gold in Alaska, seeing the destruction of his home in the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco; and surviving a ship wreck. He truly came to prominence following the Wall Street crash in 1929 when he was alleged to be about 70 years old, walking from New York City over the course of 10 days to Vineland, New Jersey.
With $7 to his name, Daynor used $4 to buy a four-acre lot before ever laying eyes on it. It was a fixer-upper to say the least; an old junkyard sitting on…
