Charles
Pratt, an American businessman and philanthropist who was a prominent figure of
the nineteenth century, founded the Astral Oil works. He was a pioneer of the
petroleum industry who formed Charles Pratt and Company with Henry H. Rogers in
1867. They later joined John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. He endowed the
Brooklyn-based art college the Pratt Institute.

The
idea of companies providing affordable housing to employees likely seems
unusual to most twenty-first century readers. This practice falls under the
idea of “welfare capitalism” that was relatively popular in Western Europe and
the United States in the nineteenth and early-twentieth century. The term
generally refers to capitalism that concentrates on including social welfare
policies in company practice, rather than focusing solely on profit. Similar
affordable housing complexes, and in some cases entire villages, were
relatively common in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—examples of
these include boarding houses built for textile workers in Lowell,
Massachusetts in the 1820s and the village of Bourneville, England, set up by
the Cadbury family for their chocolate factory. Although the idea of a company
providing affordable housing to its employees is unfamiliar in the present-day,
practices of welfare capitalism are still present in modern-day companies
through employee benefits, charitable donations, etc.While
the type of paternalistic welfare capitalism common in the time may have been well
intentioned, it still did not address many of the most prevalent problems for
working class employees of the time, such as long work hours, dangerous working
conditions, and lack of job security. For this reason, employees often resented
employers for the housing provided, particularly if it was in “company towns”, because
of the amount of company control employees felt was present in their lives.The
Astral Apartment building is still residential, with commercial businesses
occupying the ground floor.

Astral Apartment building in the nineteenth century

Forgotten New York: Views of a Lost Metropolis by Kevin Walsh

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The Astral Apartments were built between 1885-1886 and used as affordable housing for the workers of Astral Oil Works, a kerosene refinery. The Astral Apartment building is made of brick and terracotta in the Queen Anne Style. American Queen Anne Style refers to structures with “free Renaissance”, or non-Gothic Revival, characteristics.

Astral Apartments

Sample a selection of the hundreds of historical buildings in Greenpoint from the 19th and early 20th centuries, from factories to places for factory workers to live, and places where locals could see a performance or store their money. Check out included maps to take side strolls through more of the Greenpoint Historic District before ending at McGolrick Park and its monument to Greenpointers and World War I.

Eberhard Faber I came from a long line of pencil-makers in Germany. His great-great grandfather, Caspar Faber, sold lead pencils in 1761 in Stein, a village on the outskirts of Nuremberg, Bavaria. Eberhard Faber I moved operations to Manhattan in 1849, recognizing the abundance of raw materials (graphite and cedar) in America. The company bought huge tracts of cedar trees in Florida; the wood was harvested and sent to Manhattan by ship. After his factory was destroyed by fire in May 1872, Faber I moved to the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. Only days after the fire, Eberhard Faber wrote a letter to the editor of a New York City newspaper, correcting the impression that his 800 factory workers would be unemployed. Faber stated that some were still being paid and that even more workers would be hired for the new factory which was already being constructed. It only took three months in between the fire and the start of pencil-making in Greenpoint.After starting in a new, wood frame, two-story building, the Greenpoint factory grew to cover most of two city blocks by the 1920s. The factory complex was bounded roughly by Greenpoint Ave. on the south, West St. on the west, Java St. on the north, and Franklin St. on the east. A brick building housing the factory stood on the corner of West and Kent streets by 1877. Eberhard Faber II and his brother, Lothar W. took over the company after their father died in 1879.A company warehouse in Manhattan closed in 1902 and the company's warehouse and shipping functions moved to the Greenpoint complex. By 1919, the Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory in Greenpoint was producing lead pencils, penholders, rubber erasers, rubber bands, and rubber novelties. A 1919 newspaper ad welcomed attendees to the company's booth at the Brooklyn Engineers Club meeting at a local armory to see how the company made Van Dyke drawing pencils, watch a professional engineer demonstrate their use, and receive a free sample pencil.The factory was operating at full capacity in June 1941, with around 900 employees in their over a half million square feet of space. The company was still being run by Fabers in 1941, with Lothar's son, E.L. Faber, as company president. The factory moved operations to Pennsylvania in 1956.The western of the two buildings on the north side of Greenpoint Ave. (#39-45) is the earlier of the pair. In 1877, before #39-45 was built, wooden structures of a Faience Pottery Works, a soda water factory, and a roofing materials business stood in this location. The five-story, red brick structure was constructed around 1901 and is ornamented with iron five-point stars from the company's emblem.The eastern building on the north side of Greenpoint Ave. (#47-61) was built as additional space for the pencil factory in the early 1920s. In 1877, a string of wooden or brick buildings held stores and a plumber and tinsmith shop in this spot. The building was the last to be added to the factory complex and was the largest structure. The 47-61 Greenpoint Ave. building is six stories tall and concrete, faced in red brick wtih concrete piers. The Art Deco style building has been converted into work spaces and luxury condominiums. Look for the reliefs of yellow pencils, sharpened to a point, and company's logo of a str within a diamond.

The two large buildings along the north side of Greenpoint Avenue (#39-45 and #47-61) east of West St. once contained part of the Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory. The company was founded in Germany and opened operations in Manhattan in 1849. After a fire, the factory moved to the Greenpoint neighborhood in 1872. The red brick. 5-story building on the west is older. The eastern building, 6 stories of red brick with bands of concrete, was added as an expansion of the factory in 1923 to 1924. Look closely and you'll see stars, a symbol of the company. The factory complex in Greenpoint, the oldest pencil factory in America and the only one of its kind in Brooklyn, closed in 1956 and moved operations to Pennsylvania. The renovated buildings now hold condominium residences and leased work spaces. The pair of buildings - along with seven others in the complex - became a New York City landmarked historic district in 2007.

Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory buildings 

The Smithsonian Hall building was designed by architect William H. Gaylor for Edward Smith. Gaylor was a master builder and was appointed Commissioner of the Department of Buildings by the Mayor of Brooklyn in 1882. The hall is his only known cast iron structure. The building was probably built using cast iron to reassure the public that it was more fireproof than earlier buildings; several horrific fires had caused casualties and destroyed theaters in New York and Brooklyn. The facade of the two upper floors features a two-story monumental arcade. The ground-floor commercial spaces were renovated in the 1930s, and the secondary doorway on Greenpoint Ave. leading to the upper floors was framed in brownstone in an Art-Deco design. The original roof cornice was probably removed in the 1930s as well.Edward Smith was working as a tailor in Manhattan in the 1830s when he decided to manufacture ready-made clothing for children and young men. At that time, clothing was made-to-order. Smith established a wholesale clothing business on Maiden Lane in 1834 and partnered with Allen Gray in 1845 to form a retail clothing business, Smith Gray &amp; Company. Smith outgrew his building and had a cast iron structure built in Brooklyn in 1870 at 95 Broadway. An additional store was established in our new building built in 1878 on Manhattan Ave., with the Smithsonian rental hall above. Mr. Leslie Gray was in charge of the new store in the Smithsonian Hall building. The clothing firm's tailoring plant, where all of its clothes were made and shipped to retailers across the country, employed 1,500 by 1888; the factory still employed 250 workers by 1909.The play "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was performed in the newly built hall in February and June 1879. The "Anti-Dyspeptic Cooking Club" rented the hall in February 1889 for an evening of musical and literary entertainment, the day after the Jefferson Club held a dance in the hall. A lightweight wrestling match between brothers Tom and Martin Dempsey was held in the hall in March 1890; Tom won two of three matches. The ground floor store was Smith's clothing store, Smith Gray &amp; Company, until around 1905. The firm still operated two other stores in Brooklyn and two in Manhattan by 1911. The Smithsonian Hall building was renovated to be converted into the Seventeenth Ward Branch of Union Bank in 1906, with office spaces above. Corn Exchange Bank of Manhattan moved into the ground floor in 1910.Smithsonian Hall is within the Greenpoint Historic District, recognized by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and the National Register. The district is bounded roughly by Kent Street on the north, Manhattan Ave. on the east, Calyer or Noble Streets on the south, and Franklin St. or Clifford Pl. on the west. Most of the buildings within the district are residences built individually from the 1850s to the early 1900s, plus six churches, two banks (including Greenpoint Savings Bank, also a Clio entry), and ground-floor commercial buildings along the major streets. Development was initially spurred by the need for residences for workers along the busy waterfront industries of Brooklyn. The residences were generally finer homes for the factory managers and less spacious, walk-up flats for the factory workers.

The building at 896 Manhattan Avenue, on the southeast corner with Greenpoint Ave., was built from 1878 to early 1879 and is called Smithsonian Hall. The three-story cast iron building was designed to hold a clothing store on the ground floor and a performance hall on the upper stories. The building was converted into a bank with offices above around 1906. The building is one of hundreds within the Greenpoint Historic District, listed in the New York and National Registers in 1983. Smithsonian Hall recently contained Investors Bank on the ground floor. A dentist, a tax preparer, and a therapist have offices on the second and third floors. A NYC subway entrance - Greenpoint Ave. Station on the Green Line - is adjacent to the corner of the building on the Greenpoint Ave. side.

Smithsonian Hall

Although Greenpoint Savings Bank was incorporated in 1868, this building wasn't constructed until 1906. Founders of the bank included Archibald K. Meserole, Thomas F. Rowland, and Thomas C. Smith. The bank opened in January 1869 on the ground floor of a wood frame building on the corner of Oak and Franklin Streets (94 Franklin). As the commercial district of the neighborhood transitioned from Franklin St. to Manhattan Ave., Greenpoint Savings Bank opened a new office at 883 Manhattan Ave. in 1882. In late 1885, the new office burned down, and the bank moved temporarily to the ground floor of a townhouse at 127 Greenpoint Ave. In 1887, the bank moved to a long-term location at the northwest corner of Noble St. and Manhattan Ave (845-847 Manhattan). When the bank outgrew this space after a couple decades, a new site was chosen on the corner of Manhattan Ave. and Calyer St.The architectural firm of Helme &amp; Huberty designed the present bank building in 1906; they had recently designed the Prospect Park Boat House. The main entrance on Manhattan has a recessed portico with four Greek Doric columns below a frieze decorated with medallions and topped by a triangular pediment. The main part of the bank is two stories tall, with a set-back shorter half-story embellished with a lion head motif. The half-story is the base of a cylindrical drum below a shallow dome; the dome was clad in slate shingles in a fish-scale pattern and topped by a polygonal lantern.In 1925, an L-shaped addition was built along Manhattan and the south side of Calyer (158-172 Calyer), echoing the existing facade along Calyer. A three-story extension was constructed in 1954, extending the bank to Lorimer St. (1080-1090). In 2016, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission signed off on plans to renovate the extension into 29 luxury condos. By 2019, the residential development, designed by PKSB Architects, was called "The Helm." A real estate investor bought the Savings Bank building (the original and 1925 addition) in 2018 from Slate Property Group. Slate kept ownership of the 1954 annex, which it had purchased with the rest of the bank building in 2015. Capital One announced plans to close its branch in the building in May 2020. The bank part of the building has been vacant since then but is available to lease.

The building at 807 Manhattan Ave., on the southwest corner with Calyer St., is the Greenpoint Savings Bank, built in 1906. The bank building is one of hundreds of buildings in the Greenpoint Historic District, listed in the New York and National Registers in 1983 and a New York City landmark since 1982. The neo-Classical style bank building sports a low dome and columned porticoed main entrance on Manhattan Ave. The core of the building held a Capitol One bank branch in recent years, but the bank vacated the building in May 2020. An L-shaped addition was built in the 1920s in a style matching the original. A more modern, 3.5-story rear addition from the 1950s extended the building along Calyer to Lorimer; this "Greenpoint Savings Bank Annex" was renovated in 2019 into 29 luxury residences (1080 Lorimer St.) and rechristened "The Helm." The vacant, older parts of the bank building are available for lease as of 2022.

Greenpoint Savings Bank

Greenpoint, as a community, contributed generously to the national war effort during World War I. One hundred fifty men sacrificed their lives and countless others returned wounded (Cobb). Although this loss was saddening, the soldiers were greatly supported by the community and its leaders. Peter McGuinness, a powerful Greenpoint resident, made sure that the young men risking their lives got the respect they deserved. His association, The Greenpoint Patriotic League, threw massive sendoff celebrations that would parade across the neighborhood. This patriotism helped him get elected as the neighborhood alderman in 1919. In 1923, he used his government power to help push the creation of the Greenpoint War Memorial (Cobb).The neighborhood's most busy street, McGuinness Blvd, was named after him. The winged-lady sculpture was created by German-born Carl Augustus Heber in 1923 (New York City Parks). Its bronze figure and granite base cost $7,300 (adjusted for inflation: ~ $110,000 2019 US dollars). The figure carries a laurel and palm frond symbolizing victory and peace, respectively (New York City Parks). It currently stands in the center of the park, though that was not its original location. In 1937, the sculpture was repositioned there. In 1962, the granite base was damaged by a Christmas tree fire (New York City Parks). Moreover, in 1975 parts of the palm frond were stolen and in 1976 the sculpture was toppled (New York City Parks). Nonetheless, it was repaired and continues to serve its purpose: to commemorate the bravery and patriotism of Greenpoint's soldiers in World War I.

The Greenpoint War Memorial stands about 17 feet tall in the center of McGolrick Park, opened in 1891, commemorates local residents that fought in World War I. Built in 1923, this "winged lady" was cast out of bronze. Though bronze is a durable material, the sculpture has seen its fair share of damage and vandalism. Nonetheless, it received constant repairs and continues to stand tall for the fallen soldiers' collective bravery and unquestionable patriotism.


From Pencils to the "Other Smithsonian," Historic Greenpoint Walking Tour, Brooklyn

Astral Apartments

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information