Brooke Astor, 105
Posted: Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 6:47 amBrooke Astor, who by night reigned over New York society with a decided disdain for pretension and by day devoted her time and considerable resources to New York’s unfortunate, died Monday afternoon at her weekend estate, Holly Hill, in Briarcliff Manor, New York. She was 105. …
The attending physician listed the cause of death as pneumonia, Warner said.
Astor’s image as a benevolent society matron was overshadowed last year by that of a victimized dowager at the center of a very public family battle over her care and fortune. Yet for decades she had been known as the city’s unofficial first lady, one who moved effortlessly from the sumptuous apartments of Fifth Avenue to the ragged barrios of East Harlem, deploying her inherited millions to help the poor help themselves.
Among the rich of New York, she was perhaps the last bridge to the Gilded Age, when “society” was a closed world of old-money families, the so-called Four Hundred.
But it was a changing social order that Brooke Astor oversaw. Hers was a society defined more by balance sheets than bloodline. … Read full obituary
