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Updated: May 26, 2025
With it, one can see the witches of Salem Village sailing out of those little square windows, which look as if they were made on purpose for them, or stroll down to Derby's wharf and gaze at "Cleopatra's Barge," precursor of the yachts of the Astors and Goulds and Vanderbilts, as she comes swimming into the harbor in all her gilded glory.
The Astors, the Goelets, the Rhinelanders, the Beekmans, the Brevoorts, and practically all the mighty families that ruled the old Knickerbocker aristocracy in New York were huge land proprietors. Their fortunes thus had precisely the same foundation as that of the Prussian Junkers today. But their accumulations compared only faintly with the fortunes that are commonplace now.
The Astors cheated the city out of enormous sums in real estate and personal property taxation; Moses Taylor likewise did so, as was clearly brought out by a Senate Investigating Committee in 1890; Roberts had been implicated in great swindles during the Civil War; and as for Edward Schell, he, by collusion with corrupt officials, compelled the city to pay exorbitant sums for real estate owned by him and which the city needed for public purposes.
The old Livingston Manor was located near the village, and a little farther down is Barrytown, where the wealthy Astors have a palatial summer resort. A little farther down the river are two towns with a distinctly ancient and Dutch aspect.
"A friend of mine he says to me: 'If any one could tell you about real estate, Mosha Kronberg could. There's a man, he says, 'which his opinion you could trust in it anything what he says is so. If the Astors and the Goelets would know about East Side real estate what that feller knows understand me instead of their hundreds of millions they would have thousands of millions already."
Astor never sold? A.: Once in a while he sells, yes. Q.: But the rule is that he does not sell? A.: Well, hardly ever; he has sold, of course. Q.: Isn't it almost a saying in this community that the Astors buy and never sell? A.: They are not looked upon as people who dispose of real estate after they once get possession of it.
The wealth of the Astors hardly exceeds the treasure that is supposed to be secreted here and there about the country, and thousands of dollars have been expended in dredging rivers and shallow seas, and in blasting caves and cellars.
This large fortune, as is that of the Astors and of other extensive landlords, is not, as has been pointed out, purely one of land possessions. Far from it. The invariable rule, it might be said, has been to utilize the surplus revenues in the form of rents, in buying up controlling power in a great number and variety of corporations.
It was in these identical years that the Astors, the Goelets, the Rhinelanders and many other landholders and merchants were getting more water grants by collusion with the various corrupt city administrations.
In estimating, therefore, the collective wealth of the Astors, as in fact of nearly all of the great fortunes, the measure should not be merely the possessions of one family, but should embrace the combined wealth of interrelated rich families.
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