In the musical “fiddler on the roof” the main character, while dreaming of being rich, says he’d have a house with “one long staircase just going up, and one even longer coming down, and one just leading nowhere just for show!”
Were staircases specifically a sign of being wealthy? He talks separately about having a “big, tall house with rooms by the dozen, right in the middle of the town” so this is a seperate thing from just having a big house. Or is this just a funny line?
For context for those of you who haven’t seen the show, the main character, Tevye, is is a poor Jewish dairy farmer who lives in a small village in the pale of settlement in the Russian empire. Likely in the southern part of the pale as they mention Kyiv as being the big city. Also, it takes place in, about, 1905 or so.
It's just a funny line. While grand staircases were a thing I haven't seen the quantity of stairs as a measure of quality.
The closest passage you can find on book that was a base for the musical is at the beginning of the book when dirt poor Tevye gets an unexpected money- small change for a giver but life changing from his perspective- and for night discuss with his wife "building and destroying empires and palaces"- they ultimately settle for buying cows that in long run provided the family with stable income.