Astral Apartments, Revenue house in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, US
Astral Apartments is a large residential building in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, occupying a full city block on Franklin Street between Java and India Streets. The building is constructed of decorative brick and terra cotta, with five brownstone arched entrances along its facade, and holds listings as both a New York City Landmark and a place on the National Register of Historic Places.
Charles Pratt built this structure in 1885 to house workers from his nearby oil refinery, drawing on the model of London's Peabody housing blocks as a reference. It was one of the first projects of its kind in New York, reflecting a growing interest among some industrialists in improving conditions for their workforce.
The name comes from Charles Pratt's Astral Oil Works, the refinery that once defined much of industrial Greenpoint. Today the building is still home to residents, and its Franklin Street facade gives the neighborhood a visible connection to that working-class past.
The building takes up a full block, so a walk along Franklin Street gives a clear view of the entire facade from the outside. The interior is not open to visitors since it remains a private residence, but the exterior can easily be part of a broader walk through historic Greenpoint.
Along the roofline, decorative grotesques face inward rather than outward, making them nearly invisible from the street below. At the center of the facade, a three-story arched recess in Queen Anne style breaks the otherwise flat front and draws the eye upward.
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