A building rededicated; a legacy revisited

At a celebratory event to mark the rededication of 6 MetroTech in September, several people spoke of Joseph J. Jacobs, his family, and their relationship with the school, as well as the bearing their support has on the future of not just Tandon but on the field of engineering as a whole.

Juan de Pablo

Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Executive Vice President for Global Science and Technology and Executive Dean of NYU Tandon

This is no mere assemblage of bricks and mortar; the newly unified Jacobs Hall embodies both our dedication to engineering education and the Jacobs family’s commitment to being a positive force in the world. . . . Every experiment conducted, every collaboration sparked, and every technological advance made here represents possibility."

Katus Watson

Executive Vice President and General Manager of Jacobs Engineering 

Joseph Jacobs believed that engineering meant not just solving problems, but improving lives. . . . He credited this school, his alma mater, with producing humanist-engineers: those who lead not only with intellect, but with heart— those who listen deeply, empathize genuinely, and aim to better the human experience. May Jacobs Hall be more than a building - may it be a beacon of possibility, a place where students learn to lead and feel inspired to build a better world."

Charles Hinkaty '70, MS '72

NYU Trustee Emeritus

Joseph Jacobs was and is an icon. A classic example of an American success story, he always led with authenticity, integrity, and warmth."

Linda K. Jacobs

Joseph and Violet’s daughter (in attendance with her sister Valerie Jacobs Hapke and other members of the family)

My father always treasured his time here; it was not just a place where he studied engineering but where he grew into adulthood."

It’s easy to imagine a novel based on the life of Joseph J. Jacobs, the founder of an eponymous engineering company that grew from its humble beginnings into one of the largest and most successful engineering, technical, and construction services firms in the world.

Born in 1916, Jacobs grew up in Brooklyn, where his father, an immigrant from Lebanon, worked as a razor salesman to support the family. Although his mother never learned to read or write, she was resolutely ambitious for her children, and when Jacobs contemplated quitting school in order to take on a full-time job, it was she who insisted that he complete his college education at what was then known as the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, now the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Thanks to her strong will — and some welcome financial help from his sisters Evelyn and Helen, who, in another novel-worthy detail, were then making their names as successful designers of high-end lingerie — Jacobs earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering at the school.

And if this were, indeed, a novel, whole chapters would be given over to Jacobs’ student years and the relationship he cherished with his alma mater throughout his life.

The school, as Jacobs wrote in a memoir, “was primarily for bright disadvantaged kids, as I had been, who would be the hungry entrepreneurs of the future.” He and his daughter, Linda, both ultimately sat on the school’s Board of Trustees, and as two-time chair, Jacobs was instrumental in guiding the school through some of its most challenging financial trials.

So generous and far-reaching has been the family’s support that a coveted annual teaching award bears the Jacobs name, and on June 13, 2002, the Joseph J. and Violet J. Jacobs Building was dedicated in a gala ceremony. (Jacobs frequently acknowledged that he could not have prospered in life without his wife, Violet, by his side.)

In an echo of that day, on September 10, another celebration was held, this one in honor of the rechristening of 6 MetroTech Center (previously comprising the Jacobs Academic Building and Rogers Hall) as Jacobs Hall. The building, as it has been since it opened, remains vital to the school’s mission. Home to classrooms, labs, a cutting-edge nanofabrication facility, a 10,000-square-foot MakerSpace, and much more, it’s a place where teaching, research, and collaboration converge — where curiosity is sparked, ideas take flight, and the future of engineering is shaped.

Jacobs once wrote of how proud he was of his family and their dedication to doing good in the world. “I suppose that’s as close an approach to immortality that anyone is allowed,” he asserted, “and that shall be my epitaph.” At Tandon, he has clearly achieved that immortality.