Staff Pick: When the Astors Owned New York

From humble origins in Waldorf, Germany, where he was born in 1763, John Jacob Astor became the wealthiest man in America. Through a fortune founded mainly on the fur trade and Manhattan real estate, he left heirs who have influenced the social life of New York City almost to this day. Justin Kaplan (Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: a biography) eloquently tells a part of the family story in his highly literate book, focusing on two of John Jacob's great-grandsons, cousins William Waldorf Astor and John Jacob Astor IV, who developed separate--but ultimately conjoined--hotels, the Waldorf (opened in 1893) and the Astoria (opened in 1897). In discussing these men's lives and projects, Kaplan writes charmingly about an era in all its cultural prominence and extravagance. John Jacob Astor IV's life ended as a first-class passenger on the Titanic; William Waldorf Astor became an English aristocrat who hired genealogists to search for a possible noble ancestry. He died in his adopted country after achieving his long-sought British peerage.
Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.