Astor made his fortune mainly in a fur trade monopoly, by exporting opium into the Chinese Empire, and by investing in real estate in or around New York City.

[1][2] Born in Germany, Astor immigrated to England as a teenager and worked as a musical instrument manufacturer.

Johann Jakob Astor was born in 1763 in Walldorf, a town near Heidelberg in the Electoral Palatinate, which is in the present-day German state of Baden-Württemberg.

[8] In 1779, at the age of 16, he moved to London to join his brother George in working for an uncle's piano and flute manufacturer, Astor & Broadwood.

[9] In November 1783,[7] just after the end of the American Revolutionary War, Astor boarded a ship for the United States, arriving in Baltimore around March of the following year.

[5][11] After working at his brother's shop for a time, Astor began to purchase raw hides from Native Americans, prepare them himself, and resell them in London and elsewhere at great profit.

His Columbia River trading post at Fort Astoria (established in April 1811) was the first United States community on the Pacific coast.

[20] Astor's business rebounded in 1817 after the U.S. Congress passed a protectionist law that barred foreign fur traders from U.S. territories.

The American Fur Company came to dominate trading in the area around the Great Lakes, absorbing competitors in a monopoly.

Astor had a townhouse at 233 Broadway in Manhattan[21] and a country estate, Hellgate, in Northern New York City.

[22] Astor began buying land in New York City in 1799 and acquired sizable holdings along the waterfront.

After the start of the 19th century, flush with China trade profits, he became more systematic, ambitious, and calculating by investing in New York real estate.

Astor sold his interests in the American Fur Company, as well as all his other ventures, and used the money to buy and develop large tracts of Manhattan real estate.

He supported the ornithologist John James Audubon in his studies, artwork, and travels, and the presidential campaign of Henry Clay.

[26] They had eight children: Astor belonged to the Freemasons, a fraternal order, and served as Master of Holland Lodge #8, New York City in 1788.

[35] In the short story Bartleby, the Scrivener, Herman Melville used Astor as a symbol of men who made the earliest fortunes in New York.

[36] The pair of marble lions that sit by the entrance of the New York Public Library Main Branch at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street were originally named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after Astor and James Lenox, who founded the library from his own collection.

The background to the founding of this town is described in Washington Irving's Astoria, a book whose writing was financed by Astor.