Photo of the Day: Brooklyn Campus Library, Pratt Institute, NY

While pursuing my master’s degree in library science at Pratt Institute, I spent many hours inside this landmark 1896 building constructed in the Renaissance Revival style. It is as beautiful outside, with its striking red bricks, as inside, with materials from the Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company.

Photo of the Day: Leon Smith’s ‘Triangle,’ Pratt Institute, Brooklyn NY

In September, while visiting the campus of Pratt Institute, I photographed this unusual installation in its 25-acre sculpture park.The triangle is delicately balanced on two metal balls. 

This artwork is part of sculptor Leon Smith's private sculpture park in upstate New York.

Photo of the Day: Woman’s Head Sculpture, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn NY

As with this post from the other day, this very striking outdoor sculpture is on the campus of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn—an institution best known for its art programs (though its graduate school of information and library science, from which I got my MLS, is also estimable). 

I wish that this particular sculpture had a name identified with it. It certainly drew my attention, as well as that of a couple of people who reviewed my photographs recently.

Photo of the Day: ‘Brickhead’ Sculpture, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY

I took this photograph a couple of weeks ago, while I was walking around the campus of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y. This outdoor sculpture, by James Tyler, is called “Brickhead: Yemanga.” It is made from a series of fabricated fired bricks, giving it its unusual, striking appearance.

Photo of the Day: Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn NY

Two decades ago, when I was taking library service classes in the main campus for Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, the nearby commercial thoroughfare, Myrtle Avenue, was a transitional neighborhood. In the stretch where I went to catch lunch, it wasn’t obviously crime-ridden, but it was decidedly gritty and littered with fast-food establishments.

But when I went back to see my grad-school alma mater a week and a half ago, I could see that what I had heard more recently was true: Myrtle Avenue was greatly improved. You can see some of the construction going on in this photo I took.

An article last year in The Real Deal Magazine gave some facts that confirmed my impressions: this eight-mile route through Brooklyn and Queens will see 1,200 new residential units in the next several years. Along with that will be more than 50,000 square feet of retail space.

I would bet that Pratt students would find it hard to think of the neighborhood around their campus as utterly different from what it is now. But the changes have combined to make the campus and its environs more attractive to anyone thinking of going to school there.