Suddenly a messenger came with news that the ship was in the bay. We can imagine the interest of Mr. and Mrs. Astor as they locked their store and ran to the Battery. Sure enough, it was their ship, riding gently on the tide, snug, strong and safe as when she had left.
The profit on this one voyage was seventy thousand dollars. By Eighteen Hundred and Ten, John Jacob Astor was worth two million dollars. He began to invest all his surplus money in New York real estate. He bought acreage property in the vicinity of Canal Street. Next he bought Richmond Hill, the estate of Aaron Burr. It consisted of one hundred and sixty acres just above Twenty-third Street. He paid for the land a thousand dollars an acre. People said Astor was crazy. In ten years he began to sell lots from the Richmond Hill property at the rate of five thousand dollars an acre. Fortunately for his estate he did not sell much of the land at this price, for it is this particular dirt that makes up that vast property known as "The Astor Estate."

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