Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune

Joseph Edward Smith, the house detective for the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, sat perched with gun in hand on a ledge outside the hotel’s fifth-story windows to apprehend a daring thief. He succeeded, saving the hotel’s reputation. The origins of the famous hotel date back to William Waldorf “Will” Astor, the son of John Jacob Astor III and nephew of Caroline Astor. Disenchanted with New York and his family, he decided to permanently move to Britain. Annoyed at his aunt’s domination of New York society and insistence that she (rather than his own wife) was the Mrs. Astor, Will took revenge by demolishing his father’s brownstone home and, in 1891, erecting the elegant 11-story Waldorf hotel on the site—next door to the house where Mrs. Astor still lived. The construction noise made life almost unbearable, and the looming edifice cut off the sunlight into her home. It was, in the authors’ words, “the supreme kiss-off” (95) as Will left the US and handed over the hotel’s management to a man named George Boldt.

The opulent luxury hotel, boasting hand-painted ceilings in every room, enjoyed aristocratic success and introduced the European idea of a concierge to the US. Using the hotel’s continental luxury as leverage, George Boldt determined to move the private galas that society ladies hosted into this new public space. At the gala celebrating the hotel’s opening in March 1893, he pioneered the exclusive charity ball by including a concert to benefit St. Mary’s Free Hospital for Children. Select guests streamed in from Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore as well as New York. Oysters, champagne, and other luxuries overflowed, hiding the inconvenient fact of a kitchen worker’s accidental death. The New York Times featured the party and the guest’s latest fashions on its front page, marking a new public debut of high society.

Meanwhile, matters turned worse next door for Caroline Astor and her son Jack. A disadvantaged man named John Garvin wandered into their house through an open door, found the laundry maid’s room, locked himself in, and fell asleep. The servants discovered him and had him arrested. The judge initially fined him only $5, but the Astors protested and accused him of attempted theft. A jury eventually found him guilty, and he went to prison for a year. However, the newspapers whipped up public support for Garvin and portrayed the Astors as cold, unsympathetic monsters persecuting a struggling man who only wanted a warm bed for an evening. Faced with the public relations disaster at their own home and disliking the heavy traffic around the new hotel, Jack and Caroline decided to move. When Jack learned how much profit the Waldorf raked in annually, he brokered a truce with the other side of the Astor family to realize an ambitious plan. His brownstone would likewise be demolished and a slightly larger version of the Waldorf would be raised on the site to create the joint Waldorf-Astoria hotel under Boldt’s leadership. Once again, the hotel celebrated via a charity gala in which society ladies paraded enough finery in public to make newspaper reporters gasp. It was the world’s largest, most luxurious hotel.

Oscar Tschirky, maître-d’ of the combined hotel, continued to set the bar for high society. He invented the Waldorf salad, the chafing dish, lobster Newburg, and chicken a la king, as well as the velvet roped line behind which prospective guests awaited judgment on their worthiness to enter. Those who had the money could buy entry to elite society there instead of waiting for invitations to private parties. In 1897, the Waldorf-Astoria gained the ultimate mark of approbation when Mrs. Caroline (“Lina”) Astor finally attended a ball there. Thirty years later, the hotel fell. Hit hard by Prohibition and the 1929 stock market collapse, it was demolished to make way for the Empire State Building. A new Waldorf-Astoria opened in 1931 on Park Avenue and has since changed hands many times.

Will Astor was a solitary and melancholy but self-disciplined man. Born in 1848 and raised in a strict religious household, he followed the path set for him by his father, John Jacob Astor III. He attended Columbia, studied abroad in Europe, and returned to the US to live a life of leisure, as was expected. He had glimpsed another life in Europe and had fallen in love with an Italian girl, but his family forbade both the girl and that life. Back home, he entered the family business and fell in love again, marrying the socially acceptable Mary “Mamie” Dahlgren Paul. He briefly forayed into politics, entering the New York legislature, but public mockery ensued when he failed to win a US House of Representatives seat despite uncomfortable attempts to connect with the average workingman in New York. Despising these typical Americans and loving prestige, he embraced his “un-American” background and sought new pastures.

In 1882, President Arthur sent Will to Italy as a special envoy with few real duties. Will and Mamie loved the culture. He became a serious art collector and a less successful novelist. Recalled to New York in 1885 when the president’s term ended, Will regained the opportunity to travel when his father died in 1890 and he inherited a vast fortune estimated at $150-300 million. He moved to Britain, proclaiming the US unfit for gentlemen, and in return the US papers condemned him as a traitor. In 1892, in a story that Will may have planted, New York newspapers published his premature obituary, praising him, before being forced to retract the erroneous report.

In England, Will purchased the estate of Cliveden House from the Duke of Westminster and promptly walled it off from the public. In 1894, his wife suddenly died. He became withdrawn and paranoid, throwing himself into art collecting and writing. As the owner of British periodicals, he could always be published, but his literary efforts attracted few admirers. In 1898, he renounced his US citizenship and won the bitter enmity of New Yorkers, who resented him for draining wealth from their city without giving anything back. Will ignored them, though in 1904 he briefly returned to open the Hotel Astor, a new venture chock full of modern conveniences designed for upper middle-class travelers. Back in England, he passionately sought to connect himself to nobility, resenting his ancestor’s humble origins, but failed. Instead, he bought Hever Castle, the manor where Anne Boleyn had grown up, and rebuilt it into his romantic fantasy of what a medieval castle would have been. He became increasingly reactionary, opposing social movements like women’s suffrage, though his daughter-in-law Nancy became the first woman seated in the House of Commons.

In 1914, at age 65, Will fell in love with Lady Victoria Sackville, a woman from a cosmopolitan and slightly scandalous background who was estranged from her husband. Within a year, though, she broke off the affair and moved on to other lovers. Will withdrew even more, selling off some businesses and entrusting the family’s New York properties to his sons Waldorf and John Jacob V. He had one last triumph, however: Despite the old nobility’s disdain for him, his money and influence finally persuaded the king to make him a baron in 1916 and a viscount in 1917. Nevertheless, the British press still mocked him as the son of a fur trader buying status via sordid gains.