Revealing the Origins of Northeastern Hillel and Its First Building Donated by 1925 Alumnus
The story of Julius Abrams, a 1925 engineering graduate, and his contributions to Northeastern, were shared by his daughter, Fay Wilgoren, a 96-year-old senior center resident at Hebrew Senior Life. A founding member of NU Hillel in 1962, Abrams bought and donated its first building.
This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Schuyler Velasco. Main photo: Northeastern student Gabrielle Bailey visits with Fay Wilgoren, 96, a resident at Hebrew Senior Life in Brookline. Bailey and other members of NU Hillel regularly volunteer at the senior center, attending Shabbat dinners and hosting events. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
96-year-old senior center resident shocks Northeastern Hillel volunteers with an astounding story — her father donated their building to the university
Julius Abrams was quiet. Unless his alma mater came up.
“He wasn’t antisocial,” Fay Wilgoren, his daughter, remembers. Nonetheless, during boisterous family gatherings she’d often find her late father tucked in a corner, his nose in a historical biography or trade journal. But “things he was interested in — that’s when he talked. And when he talked about Northeastern, his face lit up,” she says. “He was so proud of the campus and being able to go to college. He never thought he’d have an education.”
The son of Lithuanian immigrants, Abrams was a successful developer in Boston and one of the earliest Husky alumni. He graduated with an engineering degree in 1925, when Northeastern University mostly operated out of a YMCA building on Huntington Avenue.
Wilgoren, 96, is telling Abrams’ story from her cozy apartment in Hebrew Senior Life, an independent living facility in nearby Brookline. Gabrielle Bailey, a Northeastern pre-med student who will graduate a century after Wilgoren’s father, sits next to her, listening.
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Fay Wilgoren holds a photo of a Northeastern student she has connected with through NU Hillel and recalls her father’s great love of his alma mater. Photos by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
About a year ago, Bailey and a small group from Northeastern Hillel, the center of Jewish life on campus, began volunteering regularly at the residence. Students attend weekly Shabbat dinners, throw holiday parties and dances and pay social calls. “It’s really special,” Bailey says. “A lot of the older residents don’t interact with young people very often. You see both groups really coming out of their shells, and it shows people in a different light.”
Talking with Wilgoren, a soft yet deliberately spoken woman with wiry gray hair and a sharp memory, volunteers slowly discovered the vast depth of her family’s Northeastern connection. It’s a story that hasn’t been known fully even within NU Hillel itself — until now.
Literally and figuratively, Julius Abrams helped build Northeastern, serving as a cornerstone of Jewish life on campus along the way. As a founding member of NU Hillel in 1962, he bought and donated its first building years later, an abandoned teardown that cost him $1.
For those familiar with current Boston property values, that’s a story in itself. But as far as Abrams and Northeastern goes, it’s just a tidbit. His footprint is still visible on the Boston campus and beyond — Abrams’ construction company, The Poley-Abrams Corporation, built the White Hall dormitory, the Mugar Life Sciences building and the complete campuses in Nahant and Burlington, Massachusetts, to name a few.
Wilgoren wasn’t a Husky herself (“girls didn’t go to college then” she sighs) but her husband and two of three children were. Her daughter, Natalie, was in the nursing school’s first-ever graduating class in 1964.
Northeastern Hillel rabbi Sara Paasche-Orlow was delighted to learn Wilgoren’s family story. Since she arrived at Northeastern in December (her last position was with Hebrew Senior life, yet another cosmic-seeming connection), Paasche-Orlow has been compiling and unearthing disparate fragments of information from NU Hillel’s early days, slowly building a narrative of its rich history.
“Hillel has this fabulous old double brownstone stuffed with filing cabinets full of documents,” she says. “We desperately need to get more of this history together.”
The timing happens to be ideal. As part of its 100th anniversary celebrations this year, Hillel International — the organizing body for campus Hillel chapters — has been putting out calls for stories from graduates. As a result, Paashe-Orlow has met a who’s who of Jewish Huskies from decades past, including the family of NU Hillel’s first student president and members from the early 1970s.
“People keep coming out of the woodwork,” she says. “I love being the recipient of all these stories.”
Lifelong Husky
Julius Abrams was born in 1902; his family immigrated to Boston when he was a baby, settling just across the Charles River in Malden. His father was a hat maker who designed fur Papahkas for the Cossacks in Lithuania, then uniform caps for sanitation workers stateside. Abrams attended a high school that also operated out of the Huntington Avenue YMCA, then ended up studying civil engineering at Northeastern. As a student, he joined the Kappa Epsilon Phi fraternity and performed in parody shows, sometimes in drag. “I don’t have a picture. I wish I did!” Wilgoren says.
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Wilgoren’s father co-founded Northeastern’s first Hillel organization and helped purchase its first building. Her husband and two of three children also attended the university. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
Through the then-nascent co-op program, Abrams worked as a civil engineer in Wellesley when Fay was a baby. He helped design several public works structures still in operation in metro Boston today, including highway overpasses on Route 9 in Chestnut Hill. During the Great Depression, the family moved frequently around the city while Abrams pursued work. As a teenager during World War II, Fay sold war bonds outside the city’s Symphony building, usually sticking around afterward to eat a hot fudge sundae and catch a movie.
Read full story at Northeastern Global News