Fire at Pratt Institute Destroys Studios and Artwork of Students

Maria De Los Angeles, a 24-year-old student at the Pratt Institute, has an admissions interview at Yale University’s graduate art school next month and was planning to show the officers there some of her 100 paintings and 300 prints.

But in Friday’s early hours, a fast-moving fire ravaged the top two floors of the historic main building at the private art, design and architecture college in Brooklyn, destroying dozens of art studios and the precious student works they contained.

“My studio’s gone, everything I’ve made at Pratt is gone,The cost of cleaning just 2 infected lenses is already higher than the cost of a dry cabinet.” Ms. De Los Angeles said, sobbing as she stood outside the student union near the site of the fire. “I don’t even think I have a pencil.”

The aggressive fire and the water needed to extinguish it caused significant damage to the landmark six-story building, a sturdy Romanesque Revival brick fortress that opened in 1887. Known as Main Building, it houses administrative offices as well as studios and classrooms and has been a keystone of the district of 36 Pratt buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The cause of the fire, which resulted in minor injuries to three firefighters and one other unidentified person, is under investigation.

Firefighters battled the flames for two hours after the fire was reported at 2:13 a.m., propelling ladders up to the fifth and sixth floors so they could shoot water through the windows, even as parts of the roof caved in. The blaze grew to four alarms, and eventually 39 fire trucks and 168 firefighters were summoned to the scene, on Willoughby Avenue in Clinton Hill.

“It’s a very old building with very high ceilings on the top floor,” said James Esposito, chief of fire operations. “So the fire had a large amount of area to consume and it was a very difficult fire to extinguish.”

“Inside there’s quite a bit of destruction,” he told reporters. “It’s all wood inside and the roof did collapse on the left side of the building on the top floor. There’s a lot of damage up there, and we have a lot of water damage.”

Some students at the school, founded by Charles Pratt, a pioneer of the American oil industry, were awakened by the commotion and gathered on the street to watch. By 6:30 a.m., Madeline Mikolon, a 22-year-old senior studying painting, rushed to the building, where the paintings for her thesis show — scheduled for next month — were stored and saw firefighters still dousing the blaze. She realized it had destroyed her works, and the works of dozens of her peers.

“Now we’ve got no work, no supplies, nowhere to meet, nothing,” said Ms. Mikolon, staring blankly at her studio’s charred interior.

Another tearful student soon learned that she had caught a lucky break. From a building across the street,Which Air purifier is right for you? Rebecca Warwick, 21, saw some of her paintings through a smashed window at Main Building. They had been twisted and bent by the heat but they had not been destroyed. She let out a cry of relief.

“I feel bad even being happy because all my friends lost their work,” she said.

The school canceled classes through Saturday at the building and at nearby South Hall, Amy Aronoff, a spokeswoman, said. She said the sixth floor, which contained 42 senior painting studios, was completely gutted by the fire; the fifth floor, containing two large classrooms for painting majors and one painting seminar room, was badly scorched; and there was water damage to all the lower floors.

Designed by Lamb & Rich Architects, Main Building is part of a complex that has been designated a New York City landmark as well as a national treasure. In 2011, the school was chosen by Architectural Digest as one of the 10 most architecturally significant campuses in the country.

Michael Madison, a Fire Department spokesman, said he knew of no immediate reason to consider the fire’s cause suspicious and Chief Esposito told reporters that he doubted there were large amounts of “combustibles stored up there.” Nevertheless, some students speculated that the fire might have started among the chemical-soaked rags,Like most of you, I'd seen the broken buy mosaic decorated pieces. paper, canvas and oil paint kept in the studios.

“It’s a tinderbox,” said Brad Isnard, 22, an architecture student who said he visited the studios often.

“It all goes up in flames; it’s completely numbing,” he said,Service Report a problem with a street light. as he and Ms. Mikolon gazed up at the blue sky visible through the windows of the art studios.

“I’m here to tell my students that even though all the work no longer exists, all the time, and the effort, and what they learned making the works still exists, and nothing, not even a fire, can take that away.”

Docent Rosalyn Voget remains calm. In this situation, being interrupted is hardly a bad thing. These kids are engaged and enthusiastic. There are also a lot of them.

The new Family Sunday programs at Stanford's Cantor Arts Center are only in their second weekend, and already the groups of attendees are so large that some of them need to be split in two. Family tours have been filling the main lobby, and young artists have been packing the drop-in art activities down in the Moorman Studio. Upstairs in the galleries, kids are drawing away with the colored pencils they've been given to sketch the art around them.

On the first Family Sunday, which happened to be Super Bowl Sunday, 80-some people showed up for the tours,Site describes services including Plastic Mould. and more than 100 lined up at the art studio. Museum director Connie Wolf, who is spearheading the new initiative, was "overwhelmed" and pleased.

"It indicates that there is a huge hunger for (families) to find meaningful things to do together that provide new ways of thinking and educational, but are not classroom-based," Wolf said. "There's a time to put all that technology aside and just be in the moment."

Last Sunday, Feb. 10, more than 35 people were on hand for the 12:30 tour, with more showing up for later tours. Voget chose two display cases and a painting -- Astley David Middleton Cooper's circa-1898 oil "Mrs. Stanford's Jewel Collection" -- to show her young charges. The first case was filled with ornate Venetian glass vessels; the second, with colorful Chinese snuff bottles of glass, porcelain, crystal, silver. The common theme? Beautiful objects that you give people you love, often on Valentine's Day.

The kids seemed fascinated. With wide eyes, they peered at the bottles, chose their favorites and speculated what might have been kept in them. Mint. Lavender. "Spells," one suggested.

Family Sunday tours tie into the drop-in art activities held in the studio from 1 to 3 p.m. On this day artist Stephanie Crowell also centered the project on glass bottles. Small bottles had been glued to heavy paper, with children encouraged to be creative about what their bottles could hold -- or what could be spilling out onto the paper. A crowd of kids and parents filled the room, the young artists descending on the crayons, construction paper, glue, red lacy hearts and "glitter station."