In rents in New York City alone it is computed that the Astors collect twenty-five or thirty million dollars a year. The "Astor Estates" are managed by a central office, the agent in charge of which is said to get a salary of $50,000 a year. All the business details are attended to entirely by this agent and his force of subordinates. Of these annual rents a part is distributed among the various members of the Astor family according to the degree of their interest; the remainder is used to buy more land.
The Astor mansions rank among the most pretentious in the United States and in Europe. The New York City residence long occupied by Mrs. William Astor at Fifth avenue and Sixty-fifth street is one of extraordinary luxury and grandeur. Adjoining and connected with it is the equally sumptuous mansion of John Jacob Astor. In these residences, or rather palaces, splendor is piled upon splendor. In Mrs. William Astor's spacious ball-room and picture gallery, balls have been given, each costing, it is said, $100,000. In cream and gold the picture gallery spreads; the walls are profuse with costly paintings, and at one end is a gallery in wrought iron where musicians give out melody on festive occasions. The dining rooms of these houses are of an immensity. Embellished in old oak incrusted with gold, their walls are covered with antique tapestries set in huge oak framework with margins thick with gold. Upon the diners a luxurious ceiling looks down, a blaze of color upon black oak set off by masses of gold borders. Directly above the center of the table are painted garlands of flowers and clusters of fruit. In the hub of this representation is Mrs. Astor's monogram in letters of gold. From the massive hall, with its reproductions of paintings of Marie Antoinette and other old French court characters, its statuary, costly vases and draperies, a wide marble stairway curves gracefully upstairs. To dwell upon all of the luxurious aspects of these residences would compel an extended series of details. In both of the residences every room is a thing of magnificence.
PROXIMITY OF PALACES AND POVERTY.
From these palaces it is but a step, as it were, to gaunt neighborhoods where great parts of the population are crowded in the most inhuman way into wretched tenement houses. It is an undeniable fact that more than fifty blocks on Manhattan Island—each of which blocks is not much larger than the space covered by the Astor mansions—have each a teeming population of from 3,000 to 4,000 persons. In each of several blocks 6,000 persons are congested. In 1855, when conditions were thought bad enough, 417,476 inhabitants were crowded into the section south of Fourteenth street; but in 1907 this district contained fully 750,000 population. Forty years ago the lower sections only of Manhattan were overcrowded, but now the density of congestion has spread to all parts of Manhattan, and to parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn. On an area of two hundred acres in certain parts of New York City not less than 200,000 people exist. It is not uncommon to find eighteen men, women, and children, driven to it by necessity, sleeping in three small, suffocating rooms.
THE ASTOR MANSIONS IN NEW YORK CITY.
Occupied by the Late Mrs. William Astor and by John Jacob Astor.
But the New York City residences of the Astors are only a mere portion of their many palaces. They have impressive mansions, costing great sums, at Newport. At Ferncliffe-on-the-Hudson John Jacob Astor has an estate of two thousand acres. This country palace, built in chaste Italian architecture, is fitted with every convenience and luxury. John Jacob Astor's cousin, William Waldorf, some years since expatriated himself from his native country and became a British subject. He bought the Cliveden estate at Taplow, Bucks, England, the old seat of the Duke of Westminster, the richest landlord in England. Thenceforth William Waldorf scorned his native land, and has never even taken the trouble to look at the property in New York which yields him so vast a revenue. This absentee landlord, for whom it is estimated not less than 100,000 men, women and children directly toil, in the form of paying him rent, has surrounded himself in England with a lofty feudal exclusiveness. Sweeping aside the privilege that the general public had long enjoyed of access to the Cliveden grounds, he issued strict orders forbidding trespassing, and along the roads he built high walls surmounted with broken glass. His son and heir, Waldorf Astor, has avowed that he also will remain a British subject. William Waldorf Astor, it should be said, is somewhat of a creator of public opinion; he owns a newspaper and a magazine in London.
The origin and successive development of the Astor fortune have been laid bare in these chapters; not wholly so, by any means, for a mass of additional facts have been left out. Where certain fundamental facts are sufficient to give a clear idea of a presentation, it is not necessary to pile on too much of an accumulation. And yet, such has been the continued emphasis of property-smitten writers upon the thrift, honesty, ability and sagacity of the men who built up the great fortunes, that the impression generally prevails that the Astor fortune is preëminently one of those amassed by legitimate means. These chapters should dispel this illusion.