John Jacob Astor IV IV was born on July 13, 1864 at his parents' country estate Ferncliff in Rhinebeck, New York. He was the youngest of five children and only son of businessman, collector, and race horse breeder/owner William Backhouse Astor, Jr. and socialite Caroline Webster "Lina" Schermerhorn. His four elder sisters were Emily, Helen, Charlotte, and Caroline ("Carrie"). He was a great-grandson of fur-trader John Jacob Astor and Sarah Cox Todd, whose fortune made the Astor family one of the wealthiest in the United States. Astor's paternal grandfather William Backhouse Astor, Sr. was a prominent real estate businessman. Through his paternal grandmother, Margaret
John Jacob Astor Hotel and no longer colored pink. The lowermost two floors remained mostly vacant into the 1990s, but gradually businesses moved into the commercial spaces. The ornate lobby remained unused until 2010, when a business selling vintage furniture and hardware moved into the space. The Hotel Astoria (later John Jacob Astor Hotel) was designed by architects Tourtellotte & Hummel, who were based in Portland from 1922 to 1930 and who, after the Astoria project, designed two other hotels that are now NRHP-listed: the Lithia Springs Hotel (Ashland, Oregon) and the Redwoods Hotel (Grants Pass, Oregon). Constructed of reinforced concrete, the eight-story John