The Mrs. Astor and Trinity Church

In the center of Trinity Church's north churchyard, a singular pinnacle rises above the stone grave markers and green shrubbery. Designed by architect Thomas Nash to commemorate the genealogy of Jesus Christ from Adam and Eve to Abraham, Isaac, through to the Virgin Mary, this cenotaph—a memorial for someone buried elsewhere—is the Astor Cross. It was erected in 1914 in memory of Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor, the fabled arbiter of New York society known as “Lina” to her friends, and as "The" Mrs. Astor to everyone else.

As the leader of the Gilded Age social list known as the “Four Hundred,” Mrs. Astor was the gatekeeper of New York society, filling her ballroom on Fifth Avenue  with the handpicked aristocrats who had earned her approval due to their wealth and ability to trace their lineage to the earliest New York settlers.

Mrs. Astor married William Backhouse Astor Jr., an investor in real estate and railroads, in Trinity Church in 1853. The couple remained members of the church for the rest of their lives, first making the trek downtown from their mansion on 34th Street, and later from an even larger mansion on 65th Street and Fifth Avenue after an Astor nephew built what would become the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel next door to the 34th Street home.

Other gifts from the Astor family to Trinity Church include the large marble-carved reredos (an ornamental screen behind the altar), which was given to the church by John Jacob Astor III in 1876-77 in memory of his father, William B. Astor. And, the bronze doors at the north, south, and east-facing entries to Trinity Church were a gift from William Waldorf Astor in 1891.

Mrs. Astor had five children. Her daughter Carrie was very close to her and commissioned the Astor Cross in her honor after her death. Her son John Jacob “Jack” Astor IV perished when the Titanic sunk as he was returning from his honeymoon with his second wife, Madeleine, in 1912. Her other three daughters Emily, Helen, and Charlotte married politicians and socialites.

When Mrs. Astor died in 1908 at age 78, she was buried in the Astor Family mausoleum in Trinity Cemetery uptown in Hamilton Heights, survived at the time by three of her beloved children and 11 grandchildren.