Viscount Astor Viscount Astor Viscount Astor, of Hever Castle in the County of Kent, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1917 for the financier and statesman William Waldorf Astor, 1st Baron Astor. He had already been created Baron Astor, of Hever Castle in the County of Kent, in 1916, also in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. His eldest son, the second Viscount, was the husband of Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. the titles are held by their grandson, the fourth Viscount, who succeeded his
John Jacob Astor of the local German Reformed congregation to his death. Herman Melville used Astor as a symbol of men who made the earliest fortunes in New York in his novella, "Bartleby, the Scrivener". The pair of marble lions that sit by the entrance of the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street were originally named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after Astor and James Lenox, who founded the library from his own collection. Next, they were called Lord Astor and Lady Lenox (both lions are males). Mayor Fiorello La Guardia renamed them "Patience" and "Fortitude" during the Great