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Records of the President’s Office

 Collection
Identifier: PI-021

Scope and Contents

The Records of the Office of the President include reports submitted to and by the presidents, primarily after 1953, as well as materials about each individual president and their inaugurations. Though there are materials related to the Office of the President prior to 1953, documents relating to this period can be found in the collections of the Pratt Family or the Pratt family member who held the position of president.

Also included are documents pertinent to Pratt's Board of Trustees, the Institute's merger with Phoenix School (previously New York School of Applied Design for Women), blueprints, Cronar negatives, mortgages, and deeds surrounding the school's real estate ventures, and legal and financial documents, as well as correspondences, memorandums, and notes betwixt administrators. Beyond the aforementioned groups, relevant parties include but are not limited to: Hattie E. Puyol, Richardson Pratt Jr., Roy Goldfarb, Richard Heindel, James Donovan, Donald Mathis, Henry Saltzman, Brooklyn Educational and Cultural Alliance, Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, Committee of Correspondence for Independent Higher Education in New York, Pratt Institute Engineers Alumni Association, Teachers' Insurance and Annuity Association of America, and the New York Supreme Court.

Dates

  • 1891 - 2020

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open to the public. Records of the President's Office are restricted for 25 years after the date of creation while Records of the Board of Trustees are restricted for 50 years after the date of creation.

Conditions Governing Use

For permission to publish, contact the Archivist, Pratt Institute Library.

Biographical / Historical

The President is the chief executive officer of Pratt Institute. From 1887 to 1940 the position was as President of the Board of Trustees. After 1940 the President has been appointed by the Board, but the administrative functions of the office are separate from those of the Board. The list of presidents since the school’s founding are as follows:

Charles Pratt (founder), 1887-1891

Charles Millard Pratt, 1891-1923

Frederic B. Pratt, 1923-1937

Charles Pratt, 1937-1953

Frances H. Horn, 1953-1957

Robert F. Oxnam, 1957-1961

Richard H. Heindel, 1961-1967

William P. Maddox (acting), 1967-1968

James B. Donovan, 1968-1970

Henry Saltzman (acting), 1970-1972

Richardson Pratt, Jr., 1972-1990

Warren Ilchman, 1990-1993

Thomas Schutte, 1993-2017

Frances Bronet, 2018-present

Extent

25.64 Linear Feet (79 containers: 62 documents boxes, 2 artifact boxes, 16 clamshell book enclosures, and 2 oversize folders. )

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

The Records of the Office of the President include reports submitted to and by the presidents from 1895 to 2015 as well as materials about each individual president and their inaugurations. The records also include paper records related to institutional advancement submitted to and by the presidents, administrative records from the Phoenix School (previously New York School of Applied Design for Women), as well as materials submitted to and by the Pratt Board of Trustees from 1892 to 1993.

Arrangement

The records are arranged in nine series:

1. Reports to the President’s Office, 1952–1971

2. President's Annual Reports, 1895-circa 2004

3. Presidents, 1940–2018

4. Board of Trustees, 1948-1988

5. New York School of Applied Design for Women & New York-Phoenix School of Design, 1892-1967

6. Legal, 1948-1979

7. Real Estate, 1897-1984

8. Financial Records, 1960-1969

8. Miscellaneous, 1961-2020

Accruals

Further accruals are expected.

Harmful Language Statement

If you encounter any pejorative language (i.e. racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic) or content in the finding aids or within the content of the collection, please send an email to archives.library@pratt.edu with the relevant details. For more information about how the Pratt Institute Libraries are addressing offensive language and content across its catalogs and databases, please see the Libraries' Harmful Language Statement: https://library.pratt.edu/statement/2022/05/27/harmful-language.html.

Processing Information

This finding aid was written by Ian Post in 2016. Further accruals were processed finding aid written during the Spring 2022 semester by Sara Almai, Rachel Brenner, Gina Divencenzi, Jacob Edwards, Katherine Graves, Catherine Hartup, Anna Jacboson, Ava Kaplan, Michelle Kennedy, Olivia Meehan, Ellis Mikelic, Tori Stratis, Aditya Narasimhan Tirumalai Srinidhi, Peter Victor-Gasper, and Bonnie Whitehouse and by Caroline Zhu, Liwen HU, and Isaac Womack during Fall 2022 as part of INFO-625 School of Information course taught by Institute Archivist Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez.

Descriptive Rules Used: Finding aid adheres to that prescribed by Describing Archives: A Content Standard. Finding aid written in English

Subjects

Classifications

Finding Aid & Administrative Information

Title
Guide to the Records of the President’s Office
Author
Ian Post
Date
2016
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script

Revision Statements

  • May 5th, 2023: This finding aid was revised updated by Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez to merge and update records processed by School of Information graduate students during Spring 2022 and Fall 2022 semesters.

Repository Details

Repository Details

Part of the Pratt Institute Archives Repository

Contact:
200 Willoughby Avenue
Brooklyn NY 11205 United States
718-687-5381

Related Unprocessed Material

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