John Jacob Astor III's son, William Waldorf Astor, inherited the family house from his father. However, he and his aunt, Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, wife of William Backhouse Astor II, and the queen of New York society, began feuding. Unable to top her social prestige, he revenged himself by tearing down his mansion and putting up a hotel, which he named the Waldorf after the ancestral Astor home in Germany. Caroline, offended by the towering hotel, moved uptown, leaving her house to her son, John Jacob Astor IV. He too tore down his home and built the Astoria part of the [L3 204 / Waldorf-Astoria Hotel], named after a city in Oregon that was part of the original John Jacob Astor fur empire.
