Pratt Row Will Be Restored. Sometime.
All is not lost for Pratt Row, the group of 27 landmarked houses on Willoughby Avenue between Hall and Classon. Designed by Hobart Walker in the first decade of the 20th Century, the houses have been used as faculty housing for decades. (“Note the bay windows and alternating Dutch and triangular gables,” advises the AIA…
All is not lost for Pratt Row, the group of 27 landmarked houses on Willoughby Avenue between Hall and Classon. Designed by Hobart Walker in the first decade of the 20th Century, the houses have been used as faculty housing for decades. (“Note the bay windows and alternating Dutch and triangular gables,” advises the AIA Guide.) In recent years, however, their deteriorating condition has led the school to not replace departing tenants; as of this semester, just 11 are occupied. At a community meeting on Wednesday night, Pratt Institute head Thomas Schutte said that the school wants to convert the houses to student residences. It just needs two things first: (1) The approval of the faculty union and (2) $12 million. “I hope very soon we will know for sure what the use will be and have the funding in place,” said Schutte.
Photo by pups vs. robots
just so you know, the 1996 fire wasn’t caused by students smoking. it was the boiler. how do I know?
i was probably the last person out of that building that summer, other than the security guard who closed the door behind me.
An interesting point brought up in the Wednesday meeting was that per FD records, most of the fires at Higgins Hall over the years (and there have been quite a few, including one in September) have been caused by students smoking illegally in the building while working there around the clock without supervision. The behavior of these architecture students is just irresponsible, yet when you bring it up, Pratt’s response is usually an apologetic, “our students work so hard all night long and have to blow off steam…” But these are architecture students, and they ought to know better. The 1996 fire at Higgins Hall, which involved all three buildings in the complex, was enormous. It almost set adjacent buildings on fire, and homeowners on Clifton and Lafayette were on their rooftops with buckets and hoses at 3AM. So if Pratt plans to put student residents into the landmarked buildings on Willoughby and leave them there unsupervised, it should institute a no-smoking policy there – or we could end up with another disastrous fire that would affect not just Pratt, but the entire neighborhood.
I’m sorry, 3:57, but springing a last minute request to be excused from a zoning change that was three years (THREE YEARS!) in the making with little discussion with the community groups that worked on the plan qualifies as both dishonest and a trick. Oh sure, they got MARP and the Society for Clinton Hill to rubber stamp it, but I refer you to 12:47 and 3:34 above for opinions about the validity of that.
As a former prattster, i am very familiar with all the hub-bub involved in actually trying to get things accomplished there. in the 5 years i attended, the campus and neighborhood transformed amazingly! they don’t even look like the same places anymore! so in that respect, kudos to team shutte and all they’ve accomplished.
i wasn’t aware they sold off the mansion – that’s a shame considering the alllure of the venue for hosting special events. personally, i wouldve perferred it to be a rentable event/gallery space than for it to be flipped to condos. that could’ve been a nice ammenity for the ‘hood.
Regarding the row housing: Pratt was very hush hush about these units for a long time. it would be $prudent$ to turn these over to student housing, but it may not be the best for sake of the buildings. maybe if it’s a faculty/grad student mix these may fare better.
it’s interesting that pratt is being sneaky about their project on myrtle. i always thought they made a big mistake in not incorporating student housing above the pratt store. if they’re constructing on myrtle, then they should incorporate student housing/street level retail. leave the row houses to faculty!
i also dont think it’s pulling any dishonest tricks. its a private institution thats trying to improve its infrastructure and advance its agenda (hello nyu, columbia.!!!!) the difference here is there’s definitely been more of a symbiotic relationship with the neighborhood (esp since shutte came along). other than rising rents, there aren’t too many things to complain about. (enter gentrification debate here)
Dr Schutte has contributed to the demise of this neighborhood. I know I know pratt has been good for the community but the devastation that he has caused the buildings on Washington and the carriage houses should cause him and his cronies to hang their heads in embarrasment. THis is a school of architecture. Not NYU. Whatever, the Willoughby houses are probably going to follow a similar fate. The SOciety for Clinton Hill should be ashamed as well. Just a bunch of childless couples who banded together and or bought up vast amounts of property and thought if they all banded together with Schute they would be our great White hope. Unfortunately one of them was the one who sold that package to Schutte who now lives in Park Slope. The properties will get sold but the legacy of this school and its greedy demonic ANTI-architectural campaign will long follow them and so too will the Society of Clinton Hill with its absurd followers.
I was at the community board meeting about the applications by two property owners who want to be allowed to build under the old zoning rules that were changed this summer. The only speaker on the Grand Avenue property was the director of facilities planning for Pratt. He said that the school had a property on the same block, that it believed in contextual zoning, that everybody should have to build according to the new contextual zoning rules. But before the new zoning went into affect, Pratt got the new zoning waived for a new building it plans for Myrtle Avenue. It also got special treatment for the site on Grand Avenue that the professor testified about. I could not believe the audacity of the double standard.
Yeah, Pratt has had an incredible stabilizing effect under President Schutte. It started with its own campus and then acted on the community around it, especially on Myrtle Avenue through MARP, which is really just a front for the school. But Pratt clearly thinks that it is above the rules. Most colleges do, and most colleges expect more than Pratt does. However, I don’t know another college that more dishonestly portrays itself as an innocent as it throws its weight around.
I don’t care who lives there– just fix them before they fall down, por favor.
If the Pratt family has a mandate that these houses are to be used exclusively for faculty housing, then that needs to be followed, period.
I agree. Dr. Warren Ilchman (Dr. Schutte’s predecessor) used to have a limo drive him between the Caroline Ladd Pratt house on Clinton Avenue and the campus, because he was too frightened to walk on the streets of Clinton Hill – and he urged students to live outside the neighborhood, as he considered it “too dangerous.” He was responsible for selling off the Bommer Building and Emerson Hall.
Dr. Schutte mentioned at the meeting that Pratt is working on the exterior restoration of the landmarked portion of the facades of Higgins Hall (facing Clifton Place, St. James Place, and Lafayette Avenue), which is long overdue (since the three-building fire in 1996). Now that the scaffold has been removed, a haven for drug dealing has gone with it. Letitia James also stated that the vacant tree pits around Higgins Hall will be filled through one of her office’s initiatives next year. That’s good news; hope Pratt includes restoring Higgins’ damaged and missing landmarked exterior ironwork as well. A building’s exterior esthetics definitely have an influence on what happens around it, and when large institutional properties look neglected, they invite undesirable activity in their vicinity.