Jun 10, 2013

Architecture Students to Benefit from Late Widow’s Estate Gift

Dubbed “our boy wonder” by his colleagues on the 1930 Prattonia yearbook committee, former Pratt Trustee and instructor Charles L. Macchi (Cert. Arch ’30) will have a lasting impact on the Institute’s School of Architecture students through a generous bequest from his late wife, Fern B. Macchi, who created an endowed scholarship in her late husband’s honor. Beginning in Fall 2014, the Charles Macchi Scholarship will provide support to one or more outstanding Pratt architecture students annually.

Macchi, who passed away in 1993, began his career in the 1930s as a draftsman and went on to become a designer. In 1943, he joined Haines Lundberg Waehler (now HLW) and rose to senior associate before retiring in 1976. His principal projects for the firm included facilities for automotive giants Firestone—for which he designed the research laboratory in Akron, Ohio—and Ford Motor Company. Between 1948 and 1958, he designed the Ford Motor Company Dynamometer Laboratory, the Ford Motor Company Styling Building, the Ford Motor Company Body Engineering Building, the Ford Motor Company Scientific Laboratory and Research Building, and the Ford Motor Company Research and Engineering Center. He also played a lead role in the design of the Henry Ford Hospital Clinical Building in Detroit—a $23 million project funded by the Ford Foundation that included the creation of 14 specialty outpatient clinics.

Thanks to the generosity of Macchi’s late wife and her foresight in establishing the Charles Macchi Scholarship, future generations will have the opportunity to pursue their architecture education at Pratt and develop their own groundbreaking projects.