There is almost nothing about Alexandra Aldrich, a direct descendant of John Jacob Astor, our nation’s first multimillionaire, that gives away her aristocratic roots. She is shy and unassuming. She drives an old Subaru hatchback and wears dark, ankle-length skirts that would be less at home in one of the city’s four-star restaurants than they Read More
The Gist: 100 years before Brooke Astor was born, and 200 years before her children looted her bank accounts, John Jacob Astor was still nouveau riche. As the furry emblems on the walls of the Astor Place subway stop attest, he made his fortune on the backs of beavers. And though the scale of his Read More
“Good Lord, what’s happened to the picture?” wondered Lord William Waldorf Astor when he saw the empty wall space in Brooke Astor’s red-lacquered library, where her cherished Childe Hassam painting had hung.
For decades, the two Astors had visited each other across the Atlantic—two sides of the Read More
“Like New York itself, the Waldorf-Astoria crystallized the improbable and fabulous,” wrote historian Lloyd Morris. “It was more than a mere hotel. It was a vast, glittering, iridescent fantasy that had been conjured up to infect millions of plain Americans with a new idea—the aspiration to lead an expensive gregarious life as publicly as possible.” Read More
“Like New York itself, the Waldorf-Astoria crystallized the improbable and fabulous,” wrote historian Lloyd Morris. “It was more than a mere hotel. It was a vast, glittering, iridescent fantasy that had been conjured up to infect millions of plain Americans with a new idea—the aspiration to lead an expensive gregarious life as publicly as possible.” Read More
Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich , by Kevin Phillips. Broadway Books, 432 pages, $29.95.
Having sourly observed the continuing elongation of the private limousinesthat cruise Manhattan streets, a friend of mine devised a worthy response. “They ought to be taxed by the foot,” he said. The longer the limo, Read More
