Matthew Astor Wilks acre estate known as Cruickston Park and mansion designed by Detlef Lienau. Through his mother, Wilks was great-grandson of America's first millionaire John Jacob Astor, the fur trader and real estate magnet. Among his first cousins were DeLancey Astor Kane, Woodbury Kane, S. Nicholson Kane, and John Jacob Astor IV. His father, an English gentleman, was the son of a reverend and was born in London. Wilks, who inherited several million dollars from his family, began buying up property in lower Manhattan in 1876. He torn down the various mixed buildings and commissioned architect Charles W. Clinton to build a
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