Brooke Astor

On the afternoon of Friday, Aug. 17, eight Marine Corpsmen carried Brooke Astor’s gleaming wooden coffin up the gothic nave of Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue In The City Of New York, at the corner of 53rd Street, and rested it before the altar.

Ms. Astor, the philanthropist and socialite, died on Monday, Aug. 13 at her home in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. She was 105.

After the church choir sang several anthems, the rector read his welcome, the crowd of mourners, which consisted of some 500 people dressed mostly in black—in an apparent homage to the late Mrs. Vincent Astor many of the women wore elegant, wide-brimmed hats—sang hymns and listened as two lessons were read.  read more »

She liked to say, “People expect to see Mrs. Astor.” For her it was a matter of good manners. It was also an act of faith.  read more »

Brooke Astor, the great philanthropist and 105-year hold-out among a dying breed of old New York socialites, died at her Briarcliff Manor estate yesterday afternoon.

And today, New York's newspapers alternately feted her and dug into the recent family discord that has put her name in the tabloids in recent years in a way she had always been able to avoid in her heyday.  read more »

A young person who’s just moved to New York can hardly ignore the name Astor. It spans only one block, but Astor Place is frequently invoked by 23-year-olds, as it connects Broadway to St. Marks Place, the enduringly hip East Village destination.  read more »