Summary of Astor By Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune

By Willie M. Joseph

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of Astor By Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune

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The Astors, a legendary American family, built and lavished their fortune from 1783 to 2009. The family's fortune, initially from a beaver trapping business, grew into an empire and then Manhattan real estate. The Astors ruled Gilded Age New York society and influenced political and cultural life. Their story is a quintessentially American tale of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willie M. Joseph
• Release date: Sep 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223601609

Willie M. Joseph

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Introduction

In 1981, the author met Brooke Astor, a woman who was known for her big fur coat and beaver fur business. The author's mom, Gloria Vanderbilt, introduced them to each other at Mortimer's on Manhattan's Upper East Side. They enjoyed hanging out with their mother, who didn't take the world too seriously. The conversation was brief, but the author's mom didn't like Mrs. Astor. She said that she just never grabbed her, which was typical Gloria.

The author's mom had lived in the same penthouse apartment as Mrs. Astor, but they could not have been more different. Despite the name Vanderbilt and all that came with it, Gloria had little interest in the social world in which Brooke Astor lived, ruled, and reveled. She would never have married a man like Vincent Astor for his money, as Brooke had.

Gloria Vanderbilt, who had lived in the same penthouse apartment as Mrs. Astor, rejected the social world in which Brooke Astor lived, ruled, and reveled. She was an artist, painter, and writer, and preferred to surround herself with creative people. Her friend Ben Brantley, who closely followed the comings and goings of New York society, remarked that there was a vestigial part of Gloria that felt they disapproved of her as a maverick.

In conclusion, the author's mother and Brooke Astor were two of the last exemplars of Gilded Age New York, with their differences in appearance and social status. Their friendship and shared interests in art and culture were often overlooked by the public.

The author recounts a fleeting interaction with Brooke Astor at Mortimer's sidewalk café before his senior year in high school. As a terrible waiter, he was intimidated by the cooks and struggled to handle multiple tables at once. Despite his inexperience, the author found it valuable to work at Mortimer's, where he met Mrs. Astor, who was not an outdoor café type of customer. The author was surprised by her aloof nonrecognition, which was common among other prominent customers. The author was aware of the privileges that being Gloria Vanderbilt's son afforded him, but seeing it play out in the summer waiting tables was a valuable education.

The author was given a chance at perspective by Glenn Bernbaum, Mortimer's mercurial owner, who allowed him to work there despite his lack of experience. This experience led the author to consider what kind of person he wanted to be and what side of the table he wanted to be on.

Brooke Astor, the most famous Astor in the world, reinvented herself as a major philanthropist and redefined the name Astor. She believed that the founding of the Astor fortune was a uniquely American, heroic tale of grit, pluck, and determination. John Jacob Astor, Vincent's great-greatgrandfather, boldly ventured into the wilderness and carved an empire out of the wilderness, dominating the North American fur trade. By 1834, his American Fur Company was the largest business enterprise in the United States. When he died in 1848, he was the richest man in America, having shrewdly plowed his fur profits into New York real estate, which became the enduring source of his family's phenomenal wealth.

However, today, nearly all of that real estate and money and power are gone, as is the world of New York high society that Brooke Astor and the original Mrs. Astor worked so hard to dominate. The Vanderbilt dynasty, the original new-money arrivistes, burst onto the scene in the late 1800s and used their wealth to buy prestige and respectability. Both families seemed to think their money would last forever, but they were wrong. The Astor fortune was ruthlessly wrung out of New York City, transformed into palaces, hotels, diamonds, art museums, libraries, yachts, parties, and eventually frittered away in a blur of betrayal, legal fees, and infighting.

Part I

Rise

New York 1784

John Jacob Astor, a wealthy man in American history, used skill and cunning to trick beavers into resting their paws in the right place. Beavers can weigh up to sixty pounds and live along rivers and ponds in dense lodges they create themselves. They are the only animals that actively shape the landscape to suit their needs. The traps used to catch them during the North American fur trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were made of steel, forged by blacksmiths into two semicircular jaws connected by a spring. Trappers carried these traps in sacks, slung over the flank of a mule or chucked into the bottom of a canoe. When the traps were pried open, the jaws were held under extreme tension by a trigger called a dog, which was released when a beaver's paw pressed the metal pan at the center, causing the jaws to clamp shut with a sharp, metallic snap and hold the startled animal fast.

Trappers would position the yawning steel jaws in a few inches of water, attached to each trap, and attach a forged metal chain of several feet. They would then take a twig, splintered at one end, and dip it into the medicine he carried in a small bottle made of animal horn. The trapper would then place it in the mud along the water's edge, dangling it at beaver nose height, only a foot or so away from death.

Beaver pelts were the common currency on the frontier, with one gun costing about ten beaver skins, eight for a thick blanket, three for an axe, two skins for a half pint of Caribbean rum, or a pound of glass beads. John Jacob Astor, a fortune hunter, knew