Look Up! The Bishop of Brooklyn's House

Image via Complex Original

Built in 1890, 241 Clinton Avenue was the home of Charles Millard Pratt. His father, Charles Pratt, was once the richest man in Brooklyn and colonized this stretch of “the other borough,” populating much of this block on Clinton Street with homes for his entire family. Pratt Senior lived across the street at 232, his middle son George Dupont next door at 245, and youngest Frederick Bayley at 229.

Pratt Senior rose from modest means to become owner of Astral Oil Company, which eventually merged with Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in 1874. Regretting his limited education, he founded the institute that bears his name to teach students “trades through the skillful use of their hands.” He died only fours year later.

William Tubby was hired to design the house at 241, and he made this masterpiece in the Romanesque Revival style that was heavily popular at the time. This house has some wonderful terra-cotta ornamentation, including a Byzantine panel with the initials CMP emblazoned in it. The hipped roof is made of dark green Mediterranean tile, and the small eyebrow window above the main grand arched porte-cochere looks like something from another Tubby.

Though the Pratts were very Baptist, most of the properties eventually became part of the Catholic Dioceses of Brooklyn. The other Pratt homes are now part of the campus of St. Joseph’s College, but this one is the official home of the Bishop of Brooklyn. With the shuttered gates out front and the looming brick wall with multiple CCTV cameras in the rear, unlike the Piazza di San Pietro, the public is definitely not welcome to this garden for an Easter hunt.

An angled view of the Bishop's house.

The wall at the rear of the house.

The driveway.

Detail of the tiled roof.