When the Astors Owned New York

Slim volume promises much delivers little:
When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age by Justin Kaplan is a bit of a disappointment. From the title and description, I was looking for a biography of the Astor family along with a taste of history about the times they lived in. While there is some brief biographical information in the book, much of it is focused on the hotels they (and others) built. Pages are allotted to the Palmer House in Chicago (which they didn't build), but far less to John Jacob Astor's death on the Titanic. His scandalous divorce and marriage to a much younger woman are also glossed over. His uncle William Waldorf Astor's life is covered in far greater detail, but even he doesn't get full coverage. Gossipy bits and pieces of the times are dropped here and there. Kaplan goes overboard in quoting Henry James in his eloquence about the beauty of hotels. There are pages of quotes from James, often repeated. The book meanders and repeats itself as well. I suppose not much should be expected from such a slim volume, but I was hoping for more.

Hotel Mania:
This book, while initially giving the impression of being a recounting of the Astor family, actually turns into a history of hotels in New York City built by wealthy people. As a biography it was well done, but as a history of the hotels it is extremely interesting. There are some asides about the inter-family feuds of the Astors, and it mentions, in passing, the death of John Jacob IV on the Titanic (perhaps more should have been said about this). To those interested in the early history of New York, and its famous hotels, this is required reading!

Excellent introduction to "the 400", the Astors, and the rise of the grand hotels:
This book is an excellent introduction to the history of "the 400" (or "the Four Hundred") and the Astor family for the many people who seek such information. Many people ask me for more information about "the 400" because my novel, "Chasing the 400", deals with the African American community's social interpretation of "the 400" during the 1950's. At that time, "the 400" was a term that was used to characterize the Black Bourgeoisie, the same as the term was used to characterize the New York Gilded Age social elite. I disagree with Kaplan that people largely seemed to not care about "the 400" after Carolyn Astor's death or disappearance from prominence in New York society. "The 400" as the social elite lived on long after Carolyn Astor's grand entertaining, and many groups of people patterned their social groups after Mrs. Astor's exclusivity. In my novel, I explain "the 400" in New York society and in 1950s Philadelphia's Black Bourgeoisie this way: "The women displayed as colored society were the ladies of 'the 400', an exclusive, informal collection of Philadelphia's black bourgeoise, the talented tenth, the doctors, lawyers and other successful colored businessmen and their wives. This exclusive group patterned themselves after "the Four Hundred", the phrase coined in the late 1800's by New York socialite Mrs. William Astor and her friends to symbolize upper crust society--the truly worthy 400 people who could fit into the ballroom of Mrs. Astor's New York home. Like Mrs. Astor's Four Hundred, Philadelphia's colored 400 attended a seemingly endless round of balls, lunches, fashion shows and cocktail soirees. Mrs. Donald Butcher, given name Harriet, ruled the colored 400 which, in reality, had only about 50 people who were truly worthy. Donald Butcher made a fortune operating the largest colored funeral home in Philadelphia, and Harriet made a life running colored society." More information about groups that might be considered to be the modern day "Four Hundred" in the African American community, such as The Links, Jack & Jill and Sigma Pi Phi--the Boule, and "Chasing the 400" can be found on my Amazon page. Malcom X, in "The Autobiography of Malcom X", also talks about "the 400" in Boston's African American community. Kaplan's discussion of how and why the Astor's concieved and built New York's grandest hotels is also fascinating. We take the grand hotel for granted today, but Kaplan explains how such hotels were truly revolutionary and transformed society at that time. Modern day real estate investors might find inspiration in Kaplan's detailed discussions of how the Astors used real estate to build their great wealth, working on one deal after another, not satisfied with more wealth than most of us could even imagine.

An entertaining history of the Astors and New York's elite:
Justin Kaplan, the Pulitzer prize-winning author of "Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain" has recently published a work of entertaining history. "When the Astors Owned New York" offers readers a voyeuristic look into the lives of New York City's high society during the Gilded Age, a society in which the Astor family remained at the pinnacle for many decades. It begins with an account of the life of the founding father of this American dynasty, John Jacob Astor (1763-1848), and progresses through five generations of the Astor male line, with a lengthy interruption to elaborate on the life of Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, wife of William Backhouse Astor, Jr., who successfully positioned herself as grande dame of New York society. The main focus of the book, however, is the rivalry between cousins William Waldorf and John Jacob Astor IV and their competition to build New York City's largest and grandest hotel. The author acquaints the reader with America's Gilded Age aristocracy known as the New York Four Hundred, of which Caroline Astor (referred to as "the" Mrs. Astor) positioned herself as matriarch. It reveals the inner workings of this society, the snobbery between "old" and "new" money, and the requirements for being accepted into Mrs. Astor's inner circle. The book's description of the rivalry between cousins William and John Jacob IV and their success in building several of the world's finest hotels gives the reader insight into how the grand hotels became the center of New York social life and provided both the media and the masses a means of getting close to and observing the lives of the elite. Because the elaborate parties of these socialites were now being held at the grand hotels rather than in the privacy of their homes, the public could live vicariously through what they witnessed firsthand or read in the newspapers about the elite. Kaplan suggests that the hotel "provided a means for the public to glimpse into the lives of the rich and maybe learn from them." What the public was to "learn" is unclear. Kaplan's vivid depiction of the Astor's "castles of capitalism" not only offers an entertaining view of Gilded Age history, but also educates us as to how New York society and its grand hotels helped to shape this era of America's history. His inclusion of the Astor family tree was extremely helpful in keeping the book's characters straight, as the Astor family had a penchant for recycling family names again and again. Of interest also, was Kaplan's inclusion of facts about items in use today that have origins in the grand hotels like the Waldorf-Astoria. The chafing dish, the use of the velvet rope to allow/prevent entry, and the Waldorf salad are but a few that are mentioned in the book. Kaplan does tend to overuse foreign terms with which the average reader is sure to be unfamiliar, and his writing sometimes emits an air of sarcasm in describing the elite. Overall, however, the book is a very enjoyable and entertaining read and is highly recommended to those interested in America's Gilded Age.

Boring!:
My, this is a dull book! Justin Kaplan may be one of the darlings of an elder generation of the literary-academic set, but he doesn't have the least idea how to write prose that will grab and keep the attention of an ordinary reader. While the book is full of details of the era he's writing about (New York in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries), those details are invariably presented as a catalogue rather than in a way that brings pictures to the reader's mind. Kaplan's paragraphs are laden with quotations from other writers, in the manner of an undergraduate term paper; and worst of all, for a book that is so heavily researched, there is not a single endnote--a reader searching for the source of any one of those quotations is doomed to frustration. Don't waste your time on this one.