3. The Astral Apartments were built to give workers good living conditions

Astral Apartments

It’s a bit ironic that residents of the Astral Apartments on the corner of Franklin Avenue and India Street have had some major issues with the building’s management over the last few years because the building was constructed by oil baron Charles Pratt, founder of Astral Oil Works, for the purpose of uplifting his workers’ lives. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Astral was built in the 1880s in the Queen Anne style with red brickwork and Victorian flourishes. It was designed by Lamb & Rich, the architecture firm behind Teddy Roosevelt‘s country house in Oyster Bay, Milbank Hall at Barnard College, and the main building at Pratt College.

Referring to Pratt, the Bowery Boys explain in their podcast, “he had this belief that you could eradicate poverty and crime if you gave people better living conditions, and so he built this structure.” When it opened, it not only had indoor plumbing and bathrooms—unheard of for working-class tenants at the time—but also social services like daycare.