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Astor in 1909 Astor as Henry IV of France. John Jacob Astor IV was born on July 13, 1864, at his parents' country estate of Ferncliff in Rhinebeck, New York.He was the youngest of five children and only son of William Backhouse Astor Jr., a businessman, collector, and racehorse breeder/owner, and Caroline Webster "Lina" Schermerhorn, a Dutch-American socialite.
The Astor family achieved prominence in business, society, and politics in the United States and the United Kingdom during the 19th and 20th centuries. With German roots, some of their ancestry goes back to the Italian and Swiss Alps, [1] the Astors settled in Germany, first appearing in North America in the 18th century with John Jacob Astor, one of the wealthiest people in history.
John Jacob Astor (born Johann Jakob Astor; July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848) was a German-born American businessman, merchant, real estate mogul, and investor. Astor made his fortune mainly in a fur trade monopoly , by exporting opium into the Chinese Empire , and by investing in real estate in or around New York City .
It’s hard to escape the name Astor when you are in New York: from Astor Place downtown to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and even the neighborhood of Astoria, Queens, the family’s legacy is everywhere.
John Jacob Astor attempted to break the British monopoly on the Pacific Northwest fur trade starting with construction of this fortified trading post in 1811. The fort subsequently became an important part of the American territorial claim to the Oregon Country. Astor sold the fort to the British North West Company in 1813. [11] 26: Fort ...
Vincent Astor redeveloped the site at 217 Broadway as the Astor House Building, a modest seven stories tall, in 1915–1916. [20] The rest was demolished in 1926 and the site rebuilt as the Transportation Building , which was designed by York and Sawyer with Art Deco details.
Walldorf (German pronunciation: [ˈvalˌdɔʁf] ⓘ; South Franconian: Walldoaf) is a town in the Rhein-Neckar-Kreis district in the state of Baden-Württemberg in Germany.. In the eighteenth century, Walldorf was the birthplace of John Jacob Astor, [3] who emigrated and became a prominent fur trader in the newly independent United States, establishing a monopoly in North America.
Built in 1890 for John Jacob Astor III, the six-story, 84,000 square foot brick building has been cited by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission as an example of the Romanesque Revival period. [2]