Pratt busted the union, and his strategies for breaking up the organization were adopted by other refineries. Astral Oil suffered several fires in the 1870s and 1880s. On January 26, 1873, Pratt's Astral Oil-works in Williamsburg caught fire. At the time, about 250 boys and adult men were employed by Pratt. No deaths were reported with the fire. There was also a December 21, 1884 fire at the Brooklyn Astral refinery. According to Pratt, much of the damages were insured. Although the merger with Rockefeller made Pratt a wealthy man, as a member of the board of directors of Standard Oil, he maintained his independence and frequently criticized Rockefeller. With Pratt's death in 1891, Rockefeller's position as the most powerful man in the oil industry, already well established, became unassailable. His family became involved with his business ventures and with Standard Oil, and Pratt's eldest son, Charles Millard Pratt (1855–1935), became Secretary of Standard Oil. In 1923 his son Herbert Lee Pratt rose to become head of Standard Oil of New York. Charles Pratt is credited with recognizing the growing need for trained industrial workers in a changing economy. In 1886, he founded and endowed the Pratt Institute, which opened in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn in 1887. Originally a technical institute, it has become a renowned art, design and architectural college. In 1910, Pratt also endowed the construction of the Pratt School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was an organizing member of the Emmanuel Baptist Church, a prominent and extant congregation near Pratt Institute worshiping in the 1887 edifice supported by Pratt and today known as perhaps the finest extant 19th Century church interior in New York City.