When John Jacob Astor IV was building his hotel, he wanted to name it for his socialite mother, Caroline Schermerhorn Astor. The press referred to her as “the Mrs. Astor,” which infuriated William Waldorf Astor to no end. He refused to name the joint hotel the Waldorf-Schermerhorn, and instead the two cousins agreed to the name Astoria in honor of the fur-trading outpost that their great-grandfather had established at the mouth of Oregon’s Columbia River in 1811.