1. Roberta Brooke Astor was an American philanthropist, socialite, and writer.
24 Facts About Brooke Astor
1. 2.
Brooke Astor served as the chairwoman of the Vincent Astor Foundation, established by her third husband, Vincent Astor, who was a member of the Astor family.
3.
Brooke Astor was the author of two novels and two volumes of personal memoirs.
4.
Roberta Brooke Russell was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the only child of John Henry Russell Jr.
5.
Brooke Astor was named for her maternal grandmother and was known as Bobby to close friends and family.
6.
Brooke Astor briefly attended The Madeira School in 1919, but graduated from the Holton-Arms School.
7.
Brooke Astor married her first husband, John Dryden Kuser, shortly after her 17th birthday, on April 26,1919, in Washington, DC "I certainly wouldn't advise getting married that young to anyone," she said later in life.
8.
Brooke Astor described her tumultuous first marriage as the "worst years of [her] life", which was punctuated by her husband's alleged physical abuse, alcoholism and adultery.
9.
Brooke Astor filed for divorce February 15,1930, in Reno, Nevada.
10.
Brooke Astor had two stepchildren by the marriage, Peter Marshall and Helen Huntington Marshall.
11.
Brooke Astor briefly worked for Ruby Ross Wood, a prominent New York interior decorator who, with her associate Billy Baldwin, decorated the Marshalls' apartment at 1 Gracie Square in New York City.
12.
Brooke Astor had been married and divorced twice before, had no children and was known to have a difficult personality.
13.
Not wanting to die alone, Brooke Astor agreed to divorce his second wife Mary Benedict "Minnie" Cushing only after she had found him a replacement spouse.
14.
Vincent died leaving all his money to the Vincent Astor Foundation; Brooke became its chairwoman.
15.
Vincent's younger half-brother, socialite John Jacob "Jakey" Brooke Astor VI was left with nothing, since Vincent's hatred for Jakey's mother Madeleine led him to believe Jakey was not even a biological Brooke Astor.
16.
Brooke Astor served as a Trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and chaired the Visiting Committee of the Metropolitan's Department of Far Eastern Art; she is credited with the idea for a Chinese garden courtyard, the Astor Court, in the Metropolitan.
17.
Brooke Astor was a benefactress to the New York Zoological Society for which Astor the baby Asian elephant was named in her honor.
18.
Brooke Astor was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992.
19.
Several news organizations including the Associated Press and The New York Times sued to have the records of the Brooke Astor case unsealed in the public interest; their request was granted September 1,2006.
20.
Brooke Astor was moved to Lenox Hill Hospital where an unidentified nurse called her appearance "deplorable" according to the Daily News.
21.
Brooke Astor was released from Lenox Hill Hospital July 29,2006, and moved to Holly Hill, her 75-acre estate in the village of Briarcliff Manor, New York, where she died August 13,2007.
22.
The diaries were compiled over the four years Brooke Astor received care and detail the elder abuse that she reportedly received from her son.
23.
Brooke Astor died August 13,2007, aged 105, from pneumonia at her home in Briarcliff Manor, New York.
24.
Brooke Astor is interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York next to Vincent.