Jacob C. Gutman
businessperson
Jacob Charles Gutman (March 19, 1890 – October 10, 1981) was an American businessman and philanthropist. With a group of businessmen he co-founded Philadelphia's Albert Einstein Medical Center in 1953; was president of Philadelphia's Federation of Jewish Agencies and its successor, the Allied Jewish Appeal; and in 1951 became the first Jewish vice-chairman of Philadelphia's United Way not born in the United States or Germany. He was president of Pressman-Gutman Corporation of New York City and Philadelphia, a textile manufacturing concern still in existence.
Gutman's son, Alvin C. "Vene" Gutman (1919–2011), subsequently president of Pressman-Gutman, and Alvin's wife, Mary Bert Gutman, built the Paul J. Gutman Library, the central library at Philadelphia University, in memory of their son, Paul J. Gutman, Jacob's grandson, a textile manufacturer affiliated with his grandfather's company. Paul J. Gutman died in an airplane accident in 1990.
Early life
Jacob C. Gutman was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1890. He was the second of seven children of Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants Joseph Barnet Gutman (1861–1934) and Henrietta Atlas (Eideles) Gutman (1862–1931). After emigrating to the United States in 1883, Barnet Gutman apprenticed with a Philadelphia tailor before in 1889 founding the Peerless Manufacturing Company, manufacturers of women's underwear and, later, leather belts and handbags. Peerless went bankrupt in 1901 before sustaining year-to-year profits immediately preceding World War I, when the company was renamed E. Gutman and Sons to reflect management of the company under Barnet and Etta Gutman's sons.
Along with brothers David, Joseph, Harry, and Ted Gutman, principals of E. Gutman and Sons, Jacob Gutman was educated at Philadelphia's Central High School and Philadelphia University, then called Philadelphia Textile College.
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