The Secret History of The Astor Family (Documentary)

This in-depth, full-length documentary explores the Astor dynasty from John Jacob Astor's 1784 fur trading and Manhattan real estate fortune through Caroline Astor's "Four Hundred" high society reign, and today's descendants including British Viscountess Nancy Astor and Alexandra Aldrich living in crumbling Rokeby mansion. It includes tours of Astor mansions—Hever Castle, Cliveden House, and Rokeby—revealing how America's first multimillion-dollar family split between British aristocracy and American decline.

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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Introduction
1:10 Meet The Astor Family
21:09 The Final Astors: Where Are They Today?
41:30 Inside The Astor’s “Old Money Mansions” You Can Visit Today
1:02:09 Why The Waldorf and Astoria Hotels Were Destroyed
1:23:29 How Mrs. Astor Created “High Society”

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John Jacob Astor arrived in America in 1784 from Walldorf, Germany with $25 and a shipment of musical instruments, quickly pivoting to fur trading across the Great Lakes and Pacific Northwest territories.

By 1800 his American Fur Company controlled the North American fur trade, and he began purchasing Manhattan farmland that future generations would never sell, accumulating property as the city expanded northward.

When Astor died in 1848 worth approximately $20 million—equivalent to $110 billion today adjusted for GDP—he was America's richest man controlling an estimated 1% of national wealth.

His son William Backhouse Astor Sr. inherited the real estate empire and married Caroline Webster Schermerhorn, whose social ambitions would transform the family from wealthy merchants into American aristocracy.

Caroline Astor—"The Mrs. Astor"—ruled New York society from the 1870s through 1900s, establishing the "Four Hundred" list of acceptable society members limited by her ballroom's capacity at 400 guests.

Her gatekeeper Ward McAllister declared "There are only about 400 people in fashionable New York Society—if you go outside that number you strike people who are either not at ease in a ballroom or else make other people not at ease."

The family split dramatically when William Waldorf Astor—Caroline's nephew—moved to England in 1890, purchasing Hever Castle where Anne Boleyn grew up and eventually becoming Viscount Astor in 1916.

William Waldorf built the Waldorf Hotel in 1893 next to his aunt Caroline's mansion to unsettle her, then cousin John Jacob Astor IV countered with the Astoria Hotel in 1897 where Caroline's mansion had stood.

The feuding cousins eventually connected their hotels with Peacock Alley—a 300-foot marble corridor—creating the world's largest hotel before demolition began in 1929 and the Empire State Building rose on the site by 1931.

The British Astors married into aristocracy including Nancy Astor becoming Britain's first female MP in 1919, while the American branch gradually declined with the last direct male heir dying in 1959.

Modern descendants include William Waldorf Astor, 4th Viscount Astor serving in House of Lords until hereditary peerages were reformed in 1999, and his stepchildren from Queen Camilla's first marriage connecting Astors to British royalty.

Alexandra Aldrich published "The Astor Orphan" memoir in 2013 describing growing up in 43-room Rokeby mansion eating discarded frozen dinners without heat, her Harvard-educated father working as unpaid handyman.

Astor mansions available for public tours include Hever Castle in Kent with 700-acre grounds, Cliveden House now a luxury hotel where the Profumo Affair unfolded in the 1960s, and Rokeby in upstate New York's Hudson Valley.

The 1973 Vanderbilt family reunion found 120 descendants with zero millionaires, but the Astor name endures through strategic British aristocratic marriages and American historical preservation rather than industrial wealth.