New York City has begun a sweeping reimagining of 14th Street, a major Manhattan corridor used by tens of thousands of people every day, with Pratt Institute playing a role in shaping its future.
Commissioner of the NYC Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) Mike Flynn recently launched the initiative with a public engagement session hosted at Pratt Manhattan on 14th Street. The $3 million, 24-month study aims to deliver a once-in-a-generation upgrade to the corridor, improving service for 28,000 daily bus riders and enhancing the experience of the many New Yorkers who pass through its commercial and cultural destinations.
Located between Sixth and Seventh Avenues along 14th Street, Pratt Manhattan has long served as a hub for scholarship, civic life, and creativity. Its ground-floor gallery hosts exhibitions such as RugLife and Black Dress that are free and open to the public, while students across disciplines regularly engage with projects that intersect with the surrounding neighborhood.
That engagement extends into the classroom. Over the spring semester, Associate Degree students in Visiting Assistant Professor John De Santis’s Communication Design and Graphic Design courses studied the shifting textures and rhythms of 14th Street for a series of connected projects, including a corridor-wide rebranding project, a proposed building activation, and a video project, “Edge to Edge,” where they developed skills in tools such as iMovie, Canva, and Adobe After Effects. Walking the length of the corridor, students photographed its many sections and compiled the images into a shared archive that became the foundation for their creative work.
From this research, each student produced original, site-specific proposals intended for temporary public display in storefront windows, cafés, galleries, and retail interiors. Many also developed concepts for activating the Pratt Manhattan building at street level, including window installations, pop-ups, and public-facing events. The diversity of creative styles reflects the complexity of 14th street.
“14th Street is nearly impossible to define,” said De Santis. “It’s so long and diverse, crossing multiple neighborhoods. That variety is what makes it so interesting; it’s essentially a slice of New York.”
Other students have been engaging with the corridor as designers, urban planners, and observers of how people move through and use the space. Christina Lok, MS Urban and Community Planning, ’26, has spent nearly two years interning with the Union Square Partnership, supporting public art installations, organizing community events, and contributing to branding initiatives. Inspired by that work, she enrolled in a visual communication and information design course with School of Information Professor Nancy Smith to deepen her understanding of brand identity and design.
As part of her role at Union Square Partnership, Lok recently conducted pedestrian counts at key intersections, enlisting fellow Pratt students to help track movement patterns. The experience gave her team a finer understanding of how people navigate the corridor, which informs transportation and commercial advocacy.
“I think one of the best parts of 14th Street is how well-connected it is,” she said. “It’s easy for me to travel between Union Square in Manhattan and where I live in Queens, and then take the train over to Pratt’s main campus in Brooklyn. What always brings me back to 14th Street is how representative it is of the city itself. You have people from all over passing through, a convenient mix of small mom-and-pop shops with major retailers, world-class public spaces, and some of the city’s strongest transit connections all in one place. It feels like a snapshot of everything great about New York.”
Students in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences are studying the present conditions and layered history of 14th Street. In Professor of Social Science and Cultural Studies May Joseph’s Walking New York City class, students explore 14th Street as a site shaped by trade, infrastructure, and climate change to better understand how the corridor will evolve in the years ahead.
“We walk along 14th Street on the West Side of Manhattan to discuss how the intersection of 14th Street and the Hudson River stages the new climate redesign aspects of New York’s climate futures,” Joseph said. “During the mid-18th century, when New York was the most important maritime port in the North Atlantic, the logic was to move between the Hudson River and the East River. Today, the dramatic landscape of Little Island, the beach on the Gansevoort Peninsula, and the High Line stage the changing coast of 21st-century New York.”
14th Street has been a corridor of civic, commercial, and creative life for centuries and the city’s ambitious redesign plan means a new chapter is underway. As the plan unfolds, pedestrians walking along it will soon find something new to marvel at and reflect upon starting June 15: a storefront gallery exhibition, Pratt Institute x The Village West: Windows on 14th Street, showcasing the work of emerging creative voices across Pratt’s six schools.
