Blog

I am lucky enough to teach writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. After the students, my favorite part of campus must be the buildings — an elegant if surly lot. The school opened in 1887 so a walk through campus can feel like a walk through the Gilded Age — gilded once again by young people with pink hair.

Our library is famous for three reasons. First, the floors in the stacks are made of glass blocks designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Second, parts of Debbie Does Dallas were shot inside. Third, in the basement of the library there is an entrance to one of Pratt’s infamous (but way too dark and scary to enter) secret tunnels that link a few of the old buildings together underground.

The jewel of the campus is the Engine Room. A glass and brass centerpiece that’s changed very little since 1887. It feels like walking into one of Joseph Cornell’s boxes. Pratt is home to a population of award-winning cats who often stroll about campus, dart into classrooms and generally act like they own the place. They all live in the Engine Room and one can hardly blame them. Three steam driven generators that were installed in 1900 still provide heat to the system. They are the oldest such machines known to be operating in the northeast. The best time to visit is during the year-end holidays when the people who care for the Engine Room have it shining, all decked out in a colored light fantasy. On New Year’s Eve, at the stroke of midnight, a steam whistle in blown, making an eerie and magnificent sound, surrounding the strangers who stand in the cold to hear its blast.