Icons we mourn: Brooke Astor

From the NYT obit:

At night — almost every night, even into her 90s — she could be found surrounded by crystal and caviar, done up in her designer dresses and magnificent jewels, seated to the right of the host. (She was always seated to the right of the host.)

For her forays around the city, she dressed as she did when she joined the ladies who lunch at East Side bistros: a finely tailored suit or a designer dress, a hat in any weather, a cashmere coat when it was cool and, in her last years, an elegant cane, her one apparent concession to age. She always wore a ring of precious stones, a bracelet, a brooch and earrings.

“If I go up to Harlem or down to Sixth Street, and I’m not dressed up or I’m not wearing my jewelry, then the people feel I’m talking down to them,” she said. “People expect to see Mrs. Astor, not some dowdy old lady, and I don’t intend to disappoint them.”

In her 98th year she was still writing articles for Vanity Fair magazine, noting with regret, for example, that gentlemen no longer wore hats and that women no longer flirted, something she said she herself never failed to do.

A widow for 48 years, Mrs. Astor had a number of suitors in that time but did not want to marry again. “I just don’t want anyone tugging at my sleeve at 10 o’clock telling me it’s time to go home,” she once told her friend Marietta Tree. “I want to go at my own speed, and it’s a lot faster than theirs.”

The Astor Court is one of my favourite places in New York.

A unique feature of the Asian galleries is the Astor Court, modeled on a Ming dynasty (1368–1644) scholar's courtyard in the Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets in Suzhou, a city west of Shanghai famous for its garden architecture. A gift of the Vincent Astor Foundation, the garden court, which opened to the public in 1981, includes an adjoining room for the Museum's collection of Chinese hardwood furniture.