Brooke Astor was linked, by marriage, to a great swath of the history of New York money and social life.

Brooke Astor was linked, by marriage, to a great swath of the history of New York money and social life. John Jacob Astor, fur trader and real-estate sharpie, is memorialized in a subway stop and the Astor Library (ancestor of the New York Public Library). The Four Hundred, an antique designation of the creme de la creme, were originally those who could fit in a 19th-century Mrs. Astor's ballroom. Our Mrs. Astor spent the second half of a centenarian's life in good works. Projects high and low benefited from her money, and her attention: for she made a point of seeing for herself where her charity went, always turned out in designer clothes and jewels. She established her regimen after some not-so-good times: Her first husband was a bum, numbers two and three (who were not) died in middle age. She wrote the last chapter of a type in great style. Dead, at 105. R.I.P.