A Titanic Connection to Astor and Art

A Titanic Connection to Astor and Art

— David Eugene Perry

Ahoy! Later this month I’ll be lecturing on maritime history aboard Holland America’s Nieuw Statendam. Naturally, I always include tales of Titanic. Today in preparation, I was reminded of a Gilded Age story connected to the wealthiest passenger on that ill-fated maiden voyage and one of its most famous victims: John Jacob Astor IV. 

Many people know that Astor perished on Titanic in 1912, but fewer know he was at the center of one of New York’s great family dramas. A feud so spectacular it gave the world the Waldorf-Astoria. His mother, Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, was the reigning “Mrs. Astor,” the queen of New York society. Her nephew, William Waldorf Astor, believed his wife deserved that title after the death of the elder Mrs. Astor. Caroline had other ideas. 

What sounded like a dispute over etiquette became a battle over prestige, power, and which branch of America’s richest family would reign supreme. William retaliated by tearing down his mansion next to hers and building the Waldorf Hotel, which literally overshadowed her home. She reportedly dismissed it with one delicious line, “There’s a glorified tavern next door.” 

Rather than surrender, Caroline and her son John Jacob IV tore down their own mansion and built the adjoining Astoria. Soon the two magnificent hotels were connected by the marble promenade known as Peacock Alley, creating the legendary Waldorf-Astoria. One of history’s most famous luxury hotels born not from cooperation, but from spite. 

Astor’s hotel legacy was extraordinary. After helping create the Waldorf-Astoria through the famous family saga, he built the St. Regis in 1904 as America’s finest luxury hotel. Two years later he opened the Knickerbocker in the newly christened Times Square, envisioning it as New York’s next great social gathering place. It was for that newest Astor hotel that he commissioned Maxfield Parrish’s “Old King Cole.” 

In 1906, he hired the celebrated American artist to paint a mural for the Knickerbocker’s bar, insisting on two things: the subject would be the nursery rhyme monarch Old King Cole, and the king’s face would be Astor’s own. The resulting mural became one of America’s great hotel artworks and generated one of New York’s favorite legends. 

Look closely, and the courtiers seem to be laughing, blushing, or pinching their noses. For generations, people have delighted in the theory that Parrish gently mocked his patron, depicting the dignified Colonel Astor as Old King Cole, caught in a rather undignified moment: passing gas in front of his court. Parrish always denied it, but the story has endured for more than a century. “Old King Cole” was commissioned for the Knickerbocker, which John Jacob Astor IV built. After his death and the hotel’s closure during Prohibition, his son Vincent ensured both his father’s legacy and Parrish’s masterpiece would endure by installing the mural in another family hotel, the St. Regis, where it still presides today. 

For San Franciscans, there’s a delightful sequel. The success of “Old King Cole” led to Parrish’s commission for “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” at San Francisco’s post 1906 Earthquake rebuilt Palace Hotel in 1909 . In “Old King Cole,” Parrish painted Astor; in “The Pied Piper,” he painted himself as the central figure surrounded by his own children. 

Today, these remain the two great surviving Maxfield Parrish hotel bar murals in America, one on each coast. So next time you’re under either mural, remember: you’re seeing not just extraordinary American art, but the legacy of a family feud, the vision of one of Titanic’s most famous passengers, and a son’s devotion to preserving his father’s masterpiece. I’ll raise a London Dry gin martini (stirred not shaken) to that. Ahoy!