PENGUIN When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age

I knew about John Jacob Aster going down with the Titanic’s sinking…leaving his very pregnant mistress to survive, by taking a seat in a lifeboat.It’s always interesting to read about the people in NY, who were born into “old money families”, during the Guilded Age. Quick & easy read.

Fantastic booj

Wonderful read so informative

Um meio divertido e eficiente para entender como as grandes fortunas dos EUA nasceram e aplicaram seus recursos. A família Astor chegou a ser proprietária de praticamente toda Manhattan. O autor é ganhador de um Pulitzer.

Normally I'm not a great fan of wealthy family biographies or histories, even though their subjects and accomplishments are notable. But I liked this book because it had a tender and lightly ironic take on the John Jacob Astor family and their struggles. The struggles were as big as their narcissism and lousy choices of first spouses and projects to work on. In four generations they had essentially dissipated a fortune thought to be the largest in New York, and the United States, in the fastest growing city in the county from 1770 onward. And they built buildings, big hotels, places of gathering and good food and wine and money where the three-piece suiters could work out deals or arrange soirrees.My father worked in New York and ate amid the celebated at the Waldorf-Astoria several times a year. Some times he took his entertaining elsewhere, to various clubs for another gathering. These were uppermiddle class gatherings where I was always seated next to some great aunt who wanted to know all about my studies or my schools, or girlfriends (I had none, thankfully) and I barely had the the vocabulary to talk to them. The lesson of these gatherings is to plan your conversations with great aunts in some detail beforehand, so as not to gt knocked back into conversational cul de sacs. Be interesting, be interested, and ask questions--good for a very nice meal.Over roughly four generations of overplanning and lack of coordinations, the Waldorfs and Astorias built some great places, as well as their personal palaces, but changes in the market--and very little new land in New York to trade or buy--absolutely undercut was was a gloriously and profoundly wastrel family.The last thing the Astor family did for New York was to protet their Episcopal Church in New York from building an office tower 50 or 60 stories over their church in New York. The Supreme Court sided with the Astors, and St. Bartholomew's remains today without the sixty-story spike above it. The Supremes decided that the air above a historical landmark like St. Bartholomew's is part of the landmark itself, so the looming office tower could not be built.