On September 8, 1810, the Tonquin set off from New York harbor with a simple mission: sail west to Oregon, via the southern tip of South America, and erect Fort Astoria, which would serve as the focal point for John Jacob Astor’s brand new Pacific Fur Company. The Tonquin, after seven months at sea and a stopover in Hawaii to resupply, reached the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon - just a stone’s throw from where Lewis and Clark had concluded their expedition a few years earlier - and completed her mission by establishing the fort. The fur trading enterprise would fail within three years, but it was successful in establishing Astoria, Oregon on the long list of places, people, and things named for John Jacob Astor.
If Astor’s plan was to have a lot of things named after him, he couldn’t have been fabulously wealthy at a better time, and he couldn’t have chosen a better line of work. He started as an assistant to his brother in a butcher shop, but quickly saw a better life in the fur trade and established his first fortune moving furs between Montreal and London, by way of New York City. Realizing an opportunity, he began buying up Manhattan real estate, which, as it turns out, appreciates in value, and he earned his second fortune. Astor utilized his connections, for example buying property at a discount from a distressed Vice President Aaron Burr, and his foresight, this time buying up bargain property during the panic of 1832, to build a landholding empire.
Astor typically didn’t build on his properties, but when he did, he named the buildings after himself. There was the Astor House Hotel, the Astor Library (which was for public use), and Astoria, his summer home on east 87th Street in Manhattan. People also liked to name things after him. Immediately following his death, the street Astor Place was named in his honor, which led to the naming of the Astor Opera House and the Astor Place subway stop. Astoria, the neighborhood in Queens across the river from his summer home, received a $500 investment from Astor towards its early development, and so the speculators decided to name the whole village for him.
His passion for naming things after the family spread to his descendants as well. Two of his great-great grandsons, one named Waldorf and the other Astor, combined their adjacent hotels in the late 1800’s to create the Waldorf-Astoria, one of New York’s premier hotels to this day. One of Astor’s grandsons bought up 12,000 acres of land in central Florida and founded a town there, which he tried to name Manhattan. For whatever reason the name didn’t stick, and the townspeople decided to go with Astor, Florida instead. There are also Astorias in Illinois, South Dakota, and Oregon, as well as Astors in West Virginia, Kansas, and Florida.
The name Astor took on a connotation of success and prosperity, and so businesses and towns around the world have used the name. There is an Astoria Grand hotel in Budapest, and an Astor House Hotel in Shanghai, neither of which have any connection to the family. In his German hometown of Walldorf, the local soccer club added his name to become FC Astoria Walldorf in honor of the family that got its start there. There are cinemas in Australia and England called Astor, and even cruise ships bearing the family name.
Astor cemented his place in the history books by making his name synonymous with wealth and aspiration. By living at a time when that kind of financial prosperity wasn't experienced by non-royals, he became the first of his kind: the first man who came from nothing and found himself richer than kings and countries. The name Astor came to signify not only opulence and luxury, but helped to set in place the American dream that anyone could arrive with a penny in their pocket and become the richest man in the country.