on “HER”

is on “HER” ITAGE THIS

To this day I don’t really see how the old drawings even relate to architecture. And I can’t imagine going to school for anything else now.

This fall I started doodling shapes and graphics again. Mostly out of a need to lengthen my attention span so I can sit in lecture classes post-covid. It’s always been a default to re-center myself.

They brought back memories of these old drawings and gave me a full circle feeling. Some things do actually stay the same.

Nina Martineck is a member of the Pratt SoA community who has focused her work on the path of history and theory. On December 13th, 2022, Nina gave a lecture on her research in the Higgins Hall Auditorium, “Places to the People : C.B.J. Synder and the Translation of Schools into Community Centers”. We sat down with her at the beginning of FA22 to discuss her work.

NM Hi I’m Nina, on the side I research old New York City Schools, especially those designed by C.J Snyder .

25 Can you give us a quick summary to introduce us to your research?

NM I research C.B.J Synder’s schools specifically, he’s my favorite, he started working in 1891 for the NY Board of Education and he worked until 1922. During that time he designed or designed additions to about 400 New York City schools, in addition to that he also made a lot of improvements to the typology of school architecture.

He developed the H plan, shaped like a letter H, which allows for two courtyards for outdoor for out door recess and all of those classrooms on the inside of the H get natural light.

He also developed the scissor stair which we still use to this day. Like DNA strains, 2 stairs for double egress. He put bulletin boards in classrooms. He put individual desk into rows.

Most importantly, he put auditoriums in schools that were accessible to the public with out them having to go through the rest of the school, which turned schools and neighborhoods into community centers. That is when schools started to have public programming for adults. That is when (schools) started to host concerts and recitals not necessarily just school functions. That is when schools became polling places where people could go to vote.

Synder developed a lot of different things, separate entrances separate heating systems separate ventilation systems to keep those programs separate which is really, really cool.

25 How did you get into C.B.J Synder?

NM I had an internship last summer at the museum of reclaimed urban space in the Lower East Side. It’s between E 9th and 10th street and avenues B and C and right there is C.B.J Synder’s P.S. 64 which is an H plan. It’s completely boarded up and abandoned. I would walk past this building every day and I was like bro this is one of the coolest things I have ever seen even though (the building) is in shambles. It is in French Renaissance Revival style, it has this gorgeous roof, these gorgeous dormers, it’s crazy. Nothing like that would ever be built today.

I hate seeing it in such disarray… I am assigned to a project about that building. There was this community group named Charas who, after the building stop being used as a school in 1971, they started homesteading it. They started squatting it.

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