Astral Apartments is a historic apartment

Apartment

An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...

 building located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Greenpoint is the northernmost neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bordered on the southwest by Williamsburg at the Bushwick inlet, on the southeast by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and East Williamsburg, on the north by Newtown Creek and Long Island City, Queens at the...

, New York, New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

The Astral was built in 1885-1886 as affordable housing for employees of Charles Pratt

Charles Pratt

Charles Pratt was a United States capitalist, businessman and philanthropist.Pratt was a pioneer of the U.S. petroleum industry, and established his kerosene refinery Astral Oil Works in Brooklyn, New York. An advertising slogan was "The holy lamps of Tibet are primed with Astral Oil." He...

's Astral Oil Works

Astral Oil Works

Astral Oil Works was founded in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, New York by Charles Pratt. Pratt was a pioneer of the petroleum industry who formed Charles Pratt and Company with Henry H. Rogers. The Pratt interests became part of John D...

. It is a massive brick and terra cotta

Terra cotta

Terracotta, Terra cotta or Terra-cotta is a clay-based unglazed ceramic, although the term can also be applied to glazed ceramics where the fired body is porous and red in color...

 building in the Queen Anne style. It features a central projecting section with a deep, three story high round arch recess. The roof features inward-looking decorative gargoyle

Gargoyle

In architecture, a gargoyle is a carved stone grotesque, usually made of granite, with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building thereby preventing rainwater from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between...

s.

The building was designed to echo red-brick apartments built for workers by George Peabody

George Peabody

George Peabody was an American-British entrepreneur and philanthropist who founded the Peabody Trust in Britain and the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, and was responsible for many other charitable initiatives.-Biography:...

 in London. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

 in 1982 and designated a City Landmark in 1983.

In popular culture

The building is the fictional setting for Kate Christensen

Kate Christensen

Kate Christensen is an American novelist. She won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for her fourth novel, The Great Man, about a painter and the three women in his life. Her previous novels are In the Drink , Jeremy Thrane , and The Epicure's Lament...

's 2011 novel The Astral.