The Waldorf Astoria. This hotel exists because two relatives couldn't stand each other.
In the eighteen nineties, the Astor family had a problem. William Waldorf Astor believed that HIS wife deserved the title the Missus Astor — because he headed the senior branch of the family. His aunt, Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, disagreed. She was THE Missus Astor. The Mystic Rose. The undisputed queen of Gilded Age New York society. Her ballroom held exactly four hundred people, and her social advisor Ward McAllister had publicly declared that among all of New York's wealthy families, only four hundred could be counted as true members of fashionable society. The exact capacity of her ballroom. Which means New York's entire social hierarchy was determined by square footage.
William was furious. So he tore down his father's mansion — right next door to Caroline's — and built a thirteen-story hotel on the site. The Waldorf. A commercial establishment. Thousands of guests. Noise. Crowds. Strangers
walking past Caroline's windows at all hours. He moved to England and watched with glee.
It worked. Caroline couldn't take it. She moved uptown. But then — and this is the twist — her son, John Jacob Astor the Fourth, built the Astoria Hotel on the site of Caroline's old mansion. Slightly larger than the Waldorf. And he connected them.
The corridor that joined the two hotels was three hundred fe
