Building construction:	1902-1904
Building commissioned by:	John Jacob Astor IV
Architect:	Stanford White, McKim Mead & White
Architect of current renovation:	Samuel G. White, Platt Byard Dovell White Architects LLP
Original purpose of the building:	Sporting pavilion with guest bedrooms. It reportedly housed the first indoor American residential swimming pool, an indoor tennis court with designed by R. Guastavino and Company, an outdoor grass tennis court (currently just a lawn area), and two squash courts (where the present-day library is located). In addition, in the lower level there was a bowling alley and shooting range.
Name of the building:	While the original plans carry the title, Astor Courts, it became known as the Ferncliff Casino or Astor Casino. The word casino became a popular term in America for sports clubs or buildings in the late 19th Century. “Casino” comes from the Italian "cascina", meaning "little house". During the 18th century, casinos were built in the gardens of country estates, providing their elite owners with places for recreation and amusing pastimes.
Occupants:	John Jacob Astor IV, known as “Jack,” and his wife, Ava, commissioned this structure to be part of their estate, which was known as Ferncliff and comprised more than 2,800 acres at its peak. Mr. Astor, who divorced Ava in 1909, married the much younger Madeleine Talmadge Force in September of 1911. It was on their return from a extended honeymoon in Europe in April 1912 that Mr. Astor’s untimely death occurred with the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic. Although Madeleine and her unborn son, the future John Jacob Astor VI, survived the sinking, neither inherited the property at Ferncliff. The property went to his first son, William Vincent Astor. In the 1940s, Vincent Astor moved out of the main house at Ferncliff into this remodeled and refashioned building done for more full-time use. Vincent married for a third time in 1953 to a woman named Brooke Russell Marshall, now the famed deceased philanthropist Brooke Astor, and they used this building until his death in 1959. Following Vincent’s death, the property of Ferncliff was partly divided with several hundred acres becoming the Ferncliff Forest Preserve while other sections were donated to the Catholic Archdiocese of New York.