The Birth of the Straube Center

When Win came to Pennington in 1975, he was looking for a place to relocate his growing family and business. What he found was an old cointreau distillery, built as a foundry around the turn of the century, abandoned after a fire in January of 1967. In the crumbling walls and sagging roof, Win saw possibilities.The town of Pennington, near the larger university town of Princeton, seemed to be the ideal place to grow his business and raise a family. By then, Win had already built a life. Yet, when he found the site, he chose to begin again. He saw potential in what stood there and committed resources and his full measure of effort – to it’s transformation.

On April 12, 1976, Win became the owner of a 9.5-acre parcel of land, complete with 11 buildings full of broken glass, rotting beams, rats, mice, and bats – and a dream. It was christened “Straube Center” – the name Win adopted in good spirits.