# John Jacob Astor III

Source: https://onco.cc/people/john-jacob-astor-iii/  
OnCo record `john-jacob-astor-iii` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

In 1884 he and his wife Charlotte were among the group who founded New York Cancer Hospital, the institution that became Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

## Summary

John Jacob Astor III (1822-1890), head of the Astor family fortune, and his wife Charlotte Augusta Gibbes Astor were among the group that founded New York Cancer Hospital in 1884 on Manhattan's Upper West Side, as Memorial Sloan Kettering's own history records. At a time when cancer patients were often turned away by general hospitals, the new hospital was devoted to their care and to the study of the disease. It was renamed Memorial Hospital, moved in the 1930s to land on York Avenue given by John D. Rockefeller Jr., and joined with the Sloan Kettering Institute to become the centre that now bears both names. The Astors' hospital is the oldest thread in the story of the largest private cancer centre in the world.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-10
- Also known as: John and Charlotte Astor
- Tags: hero; donor
- Role: With his wife Charlotte, among the founders of New York Cancer Hospital in 1884, now Memorial Sloan Kettering
- Specialisms: Cancer hospital founding; Nineteenth-century philanthropy

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jacob_Astor_III
- MSK: history and milestones: https://www.mskcc.org/about/history-milestones

## Connected records

- institutions: [Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/mskcc/)
- people: [Alfred P. Sloan Jr.](https://onco.cc/people/alfred-sloan/), [Charles F. Kettering](https://onco.cc/people/charles-kettering/), [John D. Rockefeller Jr.](https://onco.cc/people/john-d-rockefeller-jr/)
- bottlenecks: [Funding follows fashion, not burden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/john-jacob-astor-iii.json