These ironic situations exist in all religions. Here's a veritable palace taking donations of time and money from people who live in very drab and sometimes not even adequate homes, but it's "justified" on the basis that we must have respect and reverence for our rituals, traditions and deities.

Christianity did the same thing with the great cathedrals. Some of them took generations to build. They were also pushed as places of escape from the mundane, where heaven was metaphorically brought down to earth, or earth raised up toward heaven (depending on the architecture). I'm sure this was a powerful incentive in the Middle Ages, not so much since the enlightenment and certainly not in the past few generations.

The only secular equivalent I can think of is the old silent movie palaces of the 1920s, decked out like a Sultan's palace where you could be entertained in semi-air-conditioned opulence for a quarter, before returning to your soul-crushing job plowing fields or whatever. I suppose that some of the other great public spaces, like Grand Central Station or other impressive public buildings, fit this mold too. But nothing goes so over-the-top as religious "places of worship".