Philanthropist Brooke Astor Dies At 105
Brooke Astor, the civic leader, philanthropist and fixture of New York high society who gave away nearly $200 million to support the city's great cultural institutions and a host of humbler projects, died Monday at the age of 105.
Astor, recently the center of a highly publicized legal dispute over her care, died of pneumonia at Holly Hill, her Westchester County estate in Briarcliff Manor, family lawyer Kenneth Warner said.
"Brooke was a truly remarkable woman and an irreplaceable friend," longtime family friend David Rockefeller said. "She was the leading lady of New York in every sense of the word."
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says Astor was the quintessential New Yorker and all are saddened by her death. Bloomberg, who has said that he plans to make philanthropy his next career, also praises her good will and kind nature and says New York would not be what it is today without her gracious support.
Astor, says Nancy Reagan, was a great lady. "We'll not see the likes of her again," said the former first lady.
Although a legendary figure in New York City and feted with a famous gala on her 100th birthday in March 2002, Astor was mostly interested in putting the fortune that husband, Vincent Astor, left to use where it would do the most to alleviate human misery.
Her efforts won her a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1998.
"Money is like manure, it should be spread around" - a line from a Thornton Wilder play - was Astor's oft-quoted motto. There was a lot to spread: Vincent Astor's great-great-grandfather John Jacob Astor made a fortune in fur trading and New York real estate.
Brooke Astor gave millions of dollars to what she called the city's "crown jewels" — among them the New York Public Library, Carnegie Hall, the Museum of Natural History, Central Park, the Bronx Zoo and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the flags were lowered to half-staff after her death.
Photos: Brooke Astor
But she also funded scores of smaller projects: Harlem's Apollo Theater; a new boiler for a youth center; beachside bungalow preservation; a church pipe organ; furniture for homeless families moving in to apartments.
It was a very personal sort of philanthropy.
"People just can't come up here and say, `We're doing something marvelous, send a check,"' she said. "We say, 'Oh, yes, we'll come and see it."'
The final year of Astor's life was marred by a family feud over her care, including allegations that the grand dame of society was forced to sleep on a couch that smelled of urine while subsisting on a diet of pureed peas and oatmeal. Court papers said her beloved dogs Boysie and Girlsie were kept locked in a pantry.
The allegations emerged in July 2006 court documents that provided a daily source of sensational headlines. In a settlement three months later, her son, Anthony Marshall, was replaced as her legal guardian with Annette de la Renta, wife of the fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.
Marshall's son Philip Marshall, a professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, had alleged that his father was looting her estate and allowing her to live in filthy conditions at her Park Avenue duplex. Anthony Marhall, a former diplomat and Broadway producer who won Tony awards in 2003 and 2004, denied any wrongdoing.
In December, a Manhattan judge ruled that claims "regarding Mrs. Astor's medical and dental care, and the other allegations of intentional elder abuse" by Anthony Marshall were not substantiated.
The Vincent Astor Foundation was created when he died in 1959. Vincent Astor had no children; he left his widow $2 million plus the interest off $60 million and endowed the foundation with an additional $67 million. The foundation gave away approximately $200 million by the time it closed at the end of 1997.
"I grew up feeling that the most important thing in life was to have good manners and to enhance the lives of others," Brooke Astor said in a 1992 interview with The Associated Press.
She decided that since the money was made in New York it should largely be spent there. She also persuaded the trustees to give away principal as well as interest so most of the money would be spent in her lifetime.
"I'm afraid that, to old John Jacob Astor, spending principal would seem like dancing naked in the streets," she acknowledged.
Astor's giving was informed by her knowledge of the city, its institutions and its real needs.
"She devoted herself to helping people throughout New York — in all the boroughs," Rockefeller said. "And she would always visit those to whom she contributed money, and out of respect, she would always arrive well-dressed, with a pretty hat, as if she were calling on the Queen of England."
And while she had always been comfortable, she was not always rich.
When Brooke Russell was born March 30, 1902, Theodore Roosevelt was president, the U.S. had only 45 states and the Wright brothers had yet to make their first flight. She was the only child of John H. Russell, a career Marine officer who rose to become commandant of the Corps from 1934 to 1936. She was fluent in Chinese after spending her childhood in China and many other places, including the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Hawaii and Panama.
At age 16, she was pushed by her mother into marriage with J. Dryden Kuser, whom she had met at a Princeton prom. The marriage ended in divorce 10 years later.
Her second marriage was to stockbroker Charles "Buddie" Marshall. Her son Anthony, from her marriage to Kuser, took Marshall's name. During her marriage to Marshall, Astor wrote articles for various magazines and joined the staff of House & Garden, where she was feature editor for several years.
Marshall died in 1952. A year later, she married Vincent Astor, the eldest son of John Jacob Astor 4th, who died in the sinking of the Titanic.
"Vincent was a very suspicious man," she recalled. "The fact that he had total confidence in me to run the foundation made me want to vindicate him, show him — wherever he is — that I could do a good job."
Hers was a hands-on approach, personally going over applications and then going out to meet the people who ran the programs and see what they were doing.
"Even in the worst drug areas, I don't hesitate to go right in and see people," she once said.
Astor wrote four books: "Patchwork Child," a 1962 autobiography; "The Bluebird is at Home," 1965, a novel; the autobiographical "Footprints," 1980; and "The Last Blossom on the Plum Tree," 1986, a period novel.
By Ula Ulnytzky