Inside The Astor Family's "Old Money" Mansions (You Can Visit Today)

The Astors built America's first great fortune, then spent three generations figuring out what to do with it. Their answer involved buying castles, constructing hotels, and fleeing to England when democracy became too noisy. If you want to experience their world today, you'll need to leave Newport, where Beechwood is currently closed, and travel to New York or England. The properties that remain open offer wildly different experiences. One is a paranoid's fortress disguised as a gothic office building. Another is a bohemian time capsule where nothing has been cleaned in decades. A third lets you drink cocktails beneath a mural that may depict its owner as a medieval king. The final two are English estates where an American tycoon purchased his way into the aristocracy. In today's episode of Old Money Mansions, we take you to the five best places around the world to walk in the Astor family footsteps, ranked from hidden gem to aristocratic splurge. Of all the properties in the Astor portfolio, Two Temple Place is the most architecturally idiosyncratic and personally revealing. This neo-gothic fortress on London's Victoria Embankment is William Waldorf Astor's clearest statement of his psychological state. By the 1890s, Astor, then the world's richest man, had grown increasingly paranoid about kidnapping and the chaos of democratic society. He had relocated from America to England, declaring that the United States was no longer a fit place for a gentleman to live. When Astor showed the Countess of Warwick around Two Temple Place, he demonstrated a leber on the first floor that, when engaged, locked every single entrance into the building. The entire structure could be sealed off from the outside world with one pull. Medieval paranoia in an industrial age, indeed. Construction began in 1892, designed by gothic revival architect John Lowborough Pearson. Pearson created a building entirely faced in Portland stone that resembled a medieval fortress transposed into the Victorian era. The exterior presents high walls, parapets suggesting castle battlements, and sculptural ornament by master carver Nathaniel Hitch. Above the parapets sits an ornamental weather vane, representing the caravel in which Columbus sailed to America, symbolizing the arc of Astor's family from the New World back to the Old. The entrance forecourt is flanked by bronze lamp standards supporting cherub figures designed by sculptor William Silver Frith. The cherubs are depicted using a telephone and an electric light, a characteristic Astor gesture marrying historical fantasy with contemporary innovation. Interior decorator John Dibley Craze designed the spaces in French Renaissance style, employing rich wood paneling, gilded ceilings, and marble fireplaces. The mahogany staircase features null posts supporting carved figures from Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, Astor's favorite novel. The first floor gallery contains 10 ebony columns topped with capitals carved to represent American literary characters, Leather Stocking from The Last of the Mohicans, and Rip Van Winkle from Washington Irving. Astor, having abandoned America, decorated his London office with icons of American imagination. Running above these columns is an elaborate frieze depicting 82 characters from Shakespeare, all carved in relief and gilded. The centerpiece is the Great Hall, a 70-foot-long chamber paneled entirely in pencil cedar, chosen for its aromatic properties. The scent was meant to psychologically prepare visitors for negotiation, subtly predisposing them toward conciliation. The cedar paneling is surmounted by a frieze displaying 54 carved historical figures, Bismarck, Martin Luther, Robin Hood, Maid Marian. Astor's private office includes a secret door and discrete drawers designed for champagne storage. True Temple Place opened to the public in 2011 as a gallery operated by the Bulldog Trust. Exhibitions typically run January through April, open Monday through Saturday, generally 10 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. on weekdays. Monthly guided tours are available at approximately £10. Admission is typically free during exhibitions, making it one of London's most affordable entries into Gilded Age architectural fantasy. Now, Astor's paranoid office building represents one extreme of family character, and across the Atlantic, another branch took a completely different approach. If the St. Regis represents the Astor family's public-facing magnificence, Roqueby represents the quiet, intellectually engaged side of the dynasty. This branch valued books and art over ballrooms and society pages. The estate was originally built between 1812 and 1815 as La Bergerie by General John Armstrong, Jr., a Revolutionary War General and U.S. Secretary of War under President Madison. His timing was dramatic. He was serving as Secretary of War during the War of 1812 when the British attacked and burned Washington, D.C. Blamed for failing to anticipate the assault, Armstrong resigned in disgrace and retreated to his Hudson River estate. The original structure reflected Federal-era principles, a rectangular two-story building with a hipped roof topped by a square pyramidal cupola. In 1818, Armstrong's daughter married William Backhouse Astor, Sr., son and principal heir of John Jacob Astor, founder of the fur trade empire. In 1836, William Astor purchased the 728-acre estate from his father-in-law for $50,000. Margaret, a woman of literary sensibility, renamed it Roqueby after her favorite poem, Sir Walter Scott's 1813 work about chivalry and redemption. The name signaled that this branch cultivated intellectual interests. Under Astor's stewardship, the original 20-room mansion was enlarged to 48 rooms through additions that preserved the Federal proportions. The grounds were redesigned with romantic movement sensibilities. In formal gardens, meadows allowed to return to semi-wild state and carefully framed vistas of the Hudson River. Unlike the formal Italian gardens at Hever or the manicured beds at Cliveden, Roqueby's landscape emphasized the picturesque principle. The estate attracted writers, painters, and cultural figures who appreciated its Hudson River scenery and cultivated interiors. The house filled with first editions, paintings, sculptures, and accumulated material culture spanning two centuries. The turning point came through the marriage of the Chandler family, a Hudson Valley clan known for eccentric brilliance. The Chandlers produced painters, writers, architects, and patrons. This infusion transformed Roqueby from a gentleman's estate into something closer to an artist's colony. By the 20th century, it had become synonymous as a place of bohemian sympathies and intellectual nonconformity. Writers worked in the libraries. Musicians performed in the drawing rooms. Rather than undergo renovations, Roqueby was largely left to age naturally. This accident of conservatism, born from Depression-era financial constraints and philosophical indifference to fashion, resulted in a living palimpsest of 200 years of family history. Walls retain original painted finishes, faded, but authentic. Furniture bears the wear of genuine use. Books remained where previous owners placed them. Roqueby remains in family hands, owned by descendants of the Astor, Livingston, and Chandler lines. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, guided tours operate Wednesday through Monday, 11 a.m. to 1.30 p.m., lasting approximately one hour. Picnic tables behind the house allow visitors to spend an afternoon absorbing the romantic landscape. While Roqueby's Astors retreated into books and bohemianism, another branch took the opposite approach, building temples to public luxury in Manhattan. The Astor family's Fifth Avenue private mansions have been demolished. John Jacob Astor IV's hotels remain as the most tangible connection to the family's Gilded Age dominance in Manhattan, outside of named streets and the New York Public Library. Arguably, the St. Regis stands as the finest modern survivor. John Jacob Astor IV inherited his position as one of the world's wealthiest men upon his father's death in 1890. While his William Waldorf was buying castles in England, John Jacob IV resolved to reshape New York's hospitality landscape. He already had a stake in the Waldorf Astoria, completed in 1893. By 1896, he was contemplating a new property on Fifth Avenue at 55th Street, originally intended as his private mansion. Recognizing the neighborhood's shifting commercial character, Astor pivoted to a luxury hotel rivaling any European palace while incorporating the latest technology. The site cost $600,000, roughly $19.8 million in 2025 dollars. The final development totaled $5.5 million. Astor commissioned Trowbridge & Livingston, known for their French Beaux-Arts design. They created an 18-story limestone palace, completed in September 1904, and the New York Times acclaimed it as the finest hotel in America. The exterior facade was organized into three horizontal zones, mimicking a Greek column's proportions. Inside, Astor insisted every guest room have its own private telephone, an extraordinary extravagance when telephones were luxury items. The first floor featured a restaurant, cafe, and palm court. The second floor contained the Grand Ballroom and private dining rooms, all appointed in marble and bronze. And Astor's success inspired a second project, the Knickerbocker Hotel at Times Square, commissioned in 1905-1906. For its bar, Astor hired illustrator Maxfield Parrish to create a mural based on Old King Cole. The fee was $5,000, equivalent to $130,000 today. Parrish was a Quaker who didn't drink, but the offer was generous enough to overcome his reservations. Parrish executed three panels, each 8 by 10 feet. The central panel depicts King Cole on the throne, flanked by jesters. Contemporary observers noted the king's features bore a striking resemblance to John Jacob Astor himself. The mural hung in the Knickerbocker from 1906 until its closure in 1920. Then it was installed at the St. Regis in 1932, where it has presided over the King Cole bar for nearly a century. John Jacob Astor IV did not live to see his hotel's full success. On April 15, 1912, he perished in the sinking of the Titanic. The hotel operates today under Marriott International, maintaining Forbes five-star and AAA five-diamond ratings. And though the St. Regis remains fully operational at premium nightly rates, non-guests can experience the King Cole bar for the price of a cocktail, making it one of the most accessible entry points into the Astor legacy in Manhattan. The bar maintains its original Beaux-Arts appointments alongside Parrish's luminous mural, and the martinis served there carry implicit reference to an era when wealthy families used such establishments to consolidate power and display refined sensibilities. John Jacob Astor IV built his empire in Manhattan, but his cousin William Waldorf took the family fortune in a radically different direction, purchasing English history itself. Now, number two on our list is the most tourist-friendly Astor experience. William Waldorf Astor purchased the childhood home of Anne Boleyn and transformed it through a restoration so ambitious that it reads like a period drama made tangible. Astor first glimpsed Heber Castle in July 1901 and fell in love immediately. By 1903, he purchased the castle and its 630-acre estate from Edmund Meade Waldo. At the time, Heber was little more than a dilapidated farmstead. Astor saw a vessel for his Renaissance fantasies and his rejection of America. He had inherited one of America's vast fortunes in 1890, making him the richest man in that country. Yet he declared America no longer a fit place for a gentleman to live and moved to England in 1891 with a reputed $100 million. His time as Italian interior minister from 1882 to 1885 had stoked a passion for Renaissance aesthetics that would shape Heber's transformation. Between 1903 and 1908, Astor and architect Frank L. Pearson undertook an extraordinary restoration. The original 13th-century gatehouse with Tudor additions was meticulously preserved. Every fragment of original stonework was retained. Victorian intrusions were replaced with materials faithful to the 16th century. Workmen were forbidden from using modern planes, laboring instead with adze and chisels. 740 skilled craftsmen worked simultaneously on elaborate carved ceilings and plasterwork, much by Nathaniel Hitch and William Silber Frith. The result was the Astor Wing, a 100-room extension built to appear as a cluster of Tudor village structures rather than one mansion. Astor wanted guests to enjoy 20th-century comfort without the castle being diminished architecturally. The wing included central heating, a private power station, and an advanced firefighting system. A covered bridge connected it to the castle, and the gardens were Astor's artistic autobiography. Over 1,000 men transformed 125 acres of marshland into one of the world's greatest gardens at a cost of approximately £1 million today. The Italian garden stretches 220 meters by 80 meters, encased by 4-meter-high sandstone walls. The Pompeian wall displays Astor's classical statuary imported from Italy. The Nymph's Fountain, carved by William Silber Frith, was inspired by Rome's Trevi Fountain. The 38-acre lake is entirely man-made, created by diverting the River Aden. 800 men worked day and night shifts for two years using temporary railways and steam diggers. The lake filled in summer 1906, creating the illusion of a natural water feature gracing the medieval castle. Hever Castle operates as a fully open public attraction. Visitors can tour the castle interior, explore the Italian gardens, navigate the maze, and experience the lake. The castle houses Anne Boleyn's personal prayer books bearing her signature, along with Tudor portraiture and period artifacts. The estate is both an architectural marvel and a repository of genuine historical significance. It remains one of Kent's premier tourist destinations, allowing visitors to inhabit the same spaces where Astor once entertained aristocrats and political figures. Hever was Astor's romantic escape, but he had already acquired another English property with an entirely different purpose, political power. If Hever was Astor's romantic fantasy, Cliveden was his political power player. This is where he became an aristocrat, eventually taking the title of First Viscount Astor. The house remains one of England's most historically consequential estates. Cliveden sits elevated above the Thames, commanding one of the river's most dramatic vistas. The present house was designed by Charles Berry, architect of the Houses of Parliament in 1851 to 1852 to replace an earlier mansion destroyed by fire. Berry's design synthesized English Palladian architecture with Roman Cinquecento elements. Astor purchased Cliveden in 1893 for $100,000, roughly $3.2 million today. Unlike Hever, acquired for romantic associations, Cliveden was a platform for political and social dominance. Astor reconstructed the interior around 1894 to 1895. Berry's original Victorian arrangement included a square entrance hall, morning room, and separate stairwell. Astor rejected this entirely, wanting something more Italian palazzo than English country house. Working with architect Frank Pearson, he amalgamated three rooms into a single great hall designed to announce authority. The ceilings and wall were paneled in English oak with ornamental Corinthian columns. Sculptor Frith carved staircase Newell Post with figures representing previous owners, Buckingham, Orkney. It was a subtle statement that Astor now belonged to this lineage. Gilded paneling was set against turquoise and adorned with carved hunting scenes, pheasants, dogs, and rifles, symbols of aristocratic leisure. In 1906, Astor married off his son, Waldorf, to Nancy Langhorne, a wealthy American from Virginia, and transferred Cliveden as a wedding gift before retreating to Hever. And Waldorf and Nancy transformed Cliveden into the epicenter of British high society. During the 1930s, it became headquarters of the Cliveden set, an informal circle of aristocrats and politicians whose views on Nazi appeasement made it controversially influential. And Cliveden's most infamous episode unfolded in 1961. Osteopath Stephen Ward, hired to treat Bill Astor, the second Viscount, for back pain, secured a lease on Spring Cottage for minimal rent. Among Ward's guests was 19-year-old Kristen Keillor, a call girl with connections to a suspected Soviet intelligent officer. During summer 1961, Keillor was swimming in Cliveden's pool when she encountered John Profumo, Secretary of State for War. Once public, triggered a constitutional crisis. Profumo resigned from Parliament, and the scandal became emblematic of British establishment decay. In 1942, the Astors gifted Cliveden to the National Trust with a £250,000 endowment. It later became a luxury five-star hotel, preserving the house's architectural integrity. The 376-acre estate features grade-one listed gardens with legendary carpet bedding designed by John Fleming. Cliveden operates as a luxury hotel where guests can have tea in the Great Hall and stay in suites named for historical figures. National Trust members can access guided tours on designated days. The Profumo affair break is marketed as a themed package for visitors interested in that particular scandal. Indeed, some legacies are stranger than others. So from a paranoid's fortress to a bohemian retreat to Cold War espionage, the Astor properties tell the story of one family's attempt to buy permanence with money. And now we'd love to see you in the comments. Which of these Astor family old money mansions would you visit first and why? I'm personally partial to Cliveden, but we can't wait to hear your personal opinions below. And with that said, thanks for joining us for another episode. Cheers into the next one.