John Jacob Astor

When 20-year old John Jacob Astor arrived in New York City from Germany in 1784, he was almost penniless. But by the time of his death in 1848, his ventures in fur trading and real-estate development had made him the richest man in America.

Astor became his career by trading German toys for furs in upstate New York. He soon made enough money to set up a string of trading posts in the Great Lake region. In 1808, he organized the American Fur Company, which came to control most of the fur trade in the United States as the frontier moved west. Astor’s fur-trading post at Astoria, Oregon, was the first permanent American settlement in the Pacific Northwest. Astor also made a fortune during the War of 1812, buying United States government bonds at low cost and reselling them at a profit.

Astor’s greatest profits, however, came from real-estate investments. When he retired from the fur trade in 1834, he devoted his full time to this endeavor. He made so much money---he left about $20 million when he died---that his enemies called him a “self-invented money-making machine.” Astor loved making money and acquiring property. “Could I begin life again,” he said, “I would buy every foot of land on Manhattan Island.” Indeed, his heirs tried to do just that. They acquired so much real estate that they became known as “the landlords of New York.”