by Pratt, including the workers in the packing-house and box-factory. A small number were employed in the refinery. No deaths were reported due to the fire. 1874-1883: Standard Oil and union busting Charles Pratt and Company (including Astral Oil) became part of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust in 1874. However, the fact that Astral Oil was a New York branch of Standard Oil in Ohio was not made public until 1892. When the Rockefellers absorbed the Pratt interests in 1874, Pratt and Rogers began working under the auspices of Standard Oil Company, where Rogers held a number of executive positions. Pratt and Rockefeller in 1874 began to buy competing refineries in Brooklyn under the Pratt name. They succeeded in driving a number of smaller firms out of business. Around this time, the coopers’ union opposed Pratt’s efforts to cut back on certain manual operations, as they were the craftsmen who made the barrels that held the oil. Pratt busted the union, and his strategies for breaking up the organization were adopted by other refineries. In March 1881, New York City had a smelling committee make the rounds to various stills and waters in Brooklyn. At the time of the examination, the Astral oil works had 20 stills each containing 600 barrels. The Times noted that “it was said here that the noxious gases given off in condensing the petroleum were utilized as fuel to such an extent that from one-half to a whole ton of coal was saved to each furnace.” The city's Health Commissioner noted that Astral had “adopted all the known appliances, and their place was as little of a nuisance as it was possible to make it. 1884-1890s: Growth, fire, and lawsuits By late 1884, Pratt’s new Astral Oil Works in Williamsburg was on Bushwick Creek in the Eastern District of Brooklyn in Northern Williamsburg. The main building of the oil company ran from First-street about 300 feet to “the width of the block" from North Twelfth to North Thirteenth street. On December 21, 1884, a fire at Astral Oil was first noticed when an explosion shook houses and “broke windows for 300 feet" in front of the new Williamsburg Gas Works along North Twelfth Street. The tank on North 12th Street then had a body of flames shoot up from two naphtha tanks, each with the quantity of 2,500 barrels of naphtha in them. The