Fascitelli Center for Advanced Engineering
Net Position $103.3M | Master Plan | Philanthropy
Ordinary Work, Permanent Places
Junius “Babe” Gertz represents a familiar pattern in the history of the educational settlement. Fortunes are often made not through glamorous enterprises but through ordinary work done exceptionally well. Gertz and his brother built a Rhode Island business around swimming pools, water filtration and the practical engineering needed to make them work. Commercial success eventually became philanthropy, and philanthropy became a permanent part of campus life.
The pattern appears elsewhere. At the University of Michigan, Bert’s Café similarly carries the name of a businessman whose success outside the university eventually found permanent expression within it.
A name associated with a factory, shop or service business reappears on a café, commons or building used by generations of students. Gertz Café is especially fitting: practical engineering wealth returned to an engineering school as an everyday gathering place.
