While author Anderson Cooper’s mother managed in adulthood to cut a path outside storied Vanderbilt heritage, Astors ruled New York City for decades, every generation anchored to tradition, responsibility, and income. The family’s grit and ruthless determination built art museums, libraries and hotels “whose profits were squandered on yachts, houses, parties, and finally frittered away in a blur of betrayal, legal fees, and infighting.” Cooper chronicles that arc not only with facts and figures but also hierarchy, personalities, and intermittent descriptions of furnishings, art, and events.
German immigrant John Jacob Astor, who left school at 14, acquired his original wealth as a fur trader, learning the work under grueling, dangerous conditions the author vividly describes. In 1808, American Fur Company stock was worth a million dollars ($24, 427, 698 today) at a time when an annual income of $750 would make one well off. John Jacob married Sarah Todd, his landlady’s daughter. She turned out to be a street smart, ambitious helpmate. The head of the house began to outsource rough work and invest in Manhattan real estate, predominantly tenements.
A first foray into hotels, the six-story high Astor House had 300 bedrooms and 17 baths. Two dollars a day included meals. John Jacob became increasingly miserly and secretive. When his father died in 1848, son William Backhouse Astor became the richest man in America. Unlike his bombastic parent, he was shy and solitary, but capable. William “married a woman as dull as he was. She had connections.” The Astors shrugged off responsibility for the squalor of their crowded slums. They built themselves homes with indoor plumbing and central heat and an estate in the Catskills.
It was this Astor who endowed The New York Public Library and constructed the Astor Opera House (on Astor Place) in which people caroused to excess and had sex in the balconies. One night, doors to the latter were barricaded by a rioting crowd provoked by feuding British and American actors. The two thespians represented opposite levels of a growing class division. Uniformed militia was called. Leaflets read “Shall Americans or English rule in this city?” Many died. The event is one of several depicted in the television series The Gilded Age. “And here we are 174 years later, long lines snaking out the door of the Astor Place Starbucks,” Cooper quips.
In a marriage of convenience, William Backhouse Astor, Jr. wed shipping heiress Caroline Schermerhorn who ran a liveried household with a marble hall and cantilevered staircase based on Windsor Castle. She set society standards while William Jr. spent his time with racehorses, yachts, and not so discreet affairs. His wife simply refused to acknowledge the truth: “William is having a difficult cruise” (on a yacht with prostitutes) is an exemplary quote. Thirteen years later, Edith Wharton would write about them in The Age of Innocence.
“Anyone wanting acceptance in society had to be three generations removed from anyone who got their hands dirty.” Caroline and companion Ward McAllister (who would later write a tell-all book) established “The Patriarch Ball,” to which the only 400 people with pedigree were invited. Tides shifted with Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt’s competition with Caroline, specifically a lavish ball which Mrs. Astor’s daughter convinced her they had to attend. Many suggest the Vanderbilts then took over.
Competition within the family was rife. When next generation William Waldorf Astor built the Waldorf Hotel where The Empire State Building stands, Caroline was living nextdoor. Fed up with noisy, dirty construction, the doyenne toyed with tearing down her home and putting up a smelly stable. Instead she and Jack moved up to 65th Street and built Hotel Astoria on the exited site. Eventually the two hotels would be connected by Peacock Alley becomingThe Waldorf Astoria. The hotel moved to Park Avenue in 1904.
An anomaly in the family, William Waldorf made a love match with a mainline Philadelphia girl. He became an assemblyman, ambassador to Italy, and eventually bought one of England’s grand houses, Cliveden, giving up his US citizenship. When Jack Astor died on the Titanic, William Waldorf gave the house to his children, moving back here. Don’t try to work out who begat whom. There’s a chart at the front of the book.
Ava and Jack’s son Vincent married Helen Huntington, then Minnie Cushing, both terrible matches. When Minnie wanted a divorce, Vincent said she could have one if she found him another wife. She chose Brooke Russell who was swept off her feet at a single dinner and weekend stay. (She thought the Long Island furnishings were dreadful, but would fix that.) Sent away, Vincent bombarded her with letters. “Brooke was told all the negatives about him, but then, of course, there was the money.” She later insisted it was the letters that convinced her. The new bride was promised five million a year. Vincent adopted her son Anthony.
Annette de la Renta is quoted as saying, “I never heard anyone say a nice word about Vincent Astor.” He was paranoid, jealous, drank, hated parties, and was unfaithful. The head of the house disliked Anthony and kept him in boarding schools away from his mother. She put up with everything for five and a half years until her husband died of a heart attack at 67. An empire created by Astor men was for the first time handed to a woman. Brooke had the name, the foundation, and the fortune.
Meanwhile, Anthony barely knew his mother. “Her feelings towards him were blunted by rage towards his father.” His story is detailed from rocky youth though accusations of misuse of funds and elder care abuse for which he was found guilty of 14 counts. Checks were written to support his business schemes, a valuable (and beloved) painting was sold from her apartment, friends and family were kept away. Inference that his late-in-life wife was greatly responsible remains. The mini series is undoubtedly in production somewhere. “The long shadow of the Astor-dominated Gilded Age hasn’t entirely disappeared.”
There are parts of the volume you’ll undoubtedly skim frustrated at density and detail, others to which you’ll dive in fascinated by family and societal machinations. All and all, it’s good, illuminating storytelling with some particularly entertaining chapters.
Anderson Cooper photo by John Nowak
Astor- The Rise and Fall of An American Fortune
Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe
