It was not, however, until the year 1800, when he was worth a quarter of a million dollars, and had been in business fifteen years, that he indulged himself in the comfort of living in a house apart from his business.  In 1794 he appears in the Directory as “Furrier, 149 Broadway.”  From 1796 to 1799 he figures as “Fur Merchant, 149 Broadway.”  In 1800 he had a storehouse at 141 Greenwich Street, and lived at 223 Broadway, on the site of the present Astor House.  In 1801, his store was at 71 Liberty Street, and he had removed his residence back to 149 Broadway.  The year following we find him again at 223 Broadway, where he continued to reside for a quarter of a century.  His house was such as a fifth-rate merchant would now consider much beneath his dignity.  Mr. Astor, indeed, had a singular dislike to living in a large house.  He had neither expensive tastes nor wasteful vices.  His luxuries were a pipe, a glass of beer, a game of draughts, a ride on horseback, and the theatre.  Of the theatre he was particularly fond.  He seldom missed a good performance in the palmy days of the “Old Park.”

It was his instinctive abhorrence of ostentation and waste that enabled him, as it were, to glide into the millionaire without being observed by his neighbors.  He used to relate, with a chuckle, that he was worth a million before any one suspected it.  A dandy bank-clerk, one day, having expressed a doubt as to the sufficiency of his name to a piece of mercantile paper, Astor asked him how much he thought he was worth.  The clerk mentioned a sum ludicrously less than the real amount.  Astor then asked him how much he supposed this and that leading merchant, whom he named, was worth.  The young man endowed them with generous sum-totals proportioned to their style of living.  “Well,” said Astor, “I am worth more than any of them.  I will not say how much I am worth, but I am worth more than any sum you have mentioned.”  “Then,” said the clerk, “you are even a greater fool than I took you for, to work as hard as you do.”  The old man would tell this story with great glee, for he always liked a joke.

In the course of his long life he had frequent opportunities of observing what becomes of those gay merchants who live up to the incomes of prosperous years, regardless of the inevitable time of commercial collapse.  It must be owned that he held in utter contempt the dashing style of living and doing business which has too often prevailed in New York; and he was very slow to give credit to a house that carried sail out of proportion to its ballast.  Nevertheless, he was himself no plodder when plodding had ceased to be necessary.  At the time when his affairs were on their greatest scale, he would leave his office at two in the afternoon, go home to an early dinner, then mount his horse and ride about the Island till it was time to go to the theatre.  He had a strong aversion to illegitimate speculation, and particularly to gambling in stocks.