Batman Day is Saturday, September 19, 2026. At Webb Institute, we have a rather unusual reason to celebrate: for more than 30 years, our campus has been part of Gotham’s on-screen history. We are known as Wayne Manor.

At Webb, students study Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering in a historic mansion overlooking Long Island Sound. They design ships, complete demanding engineering coursework and, if they know where to look, can find a place inside Stevenson Taylor Hall that Webbies call the Batcave.

Yes, there is a Batcave. But first, a story about Robin and the courtyard.

The day the Boy Wonder came to Webb

In the 1995 film Batman Forever, Webb’s Stevenson Taylor Hall, the former Gold Coast estate known as The Braes stood in for Wayne Manor. Its grand exterior and sweeping driveway gave Gotham’s most famous resident a home on Long Island.

Webb’s Dean, Matthew Werner ’95, PG’97, was a student when the production arrived. He remembers watching Robin make his way down the driveway and around the roundabout. Sometimes the maneuver ended in a fall. The students watching cheered him on, turning a day of filming into a Webb memory that has lasted three decades.

“My classmates and I were grinding through senior year workload when the campus was invaded by the cast and crew of the latest Batman film. They clearly outnumbered the Webbies and took control of the campus. Filming started on a Friday, which promptly interrupted classes. Students left their desks and piled up against the courtyard-side classroom windows to watch Robin ride his motorcycle into the courtyard for his meet-up with Bruce Wayne, take after take; it went on for hours. After seeing the film and realizing those hours of filming amounted to mere seconds in the final film was eye-opening. Thinking back, creating a film is like designing a ship: the details matter, and getting it right often takes iteration and a keen eye for what is important. To this day, 31 years later, I often think about the filming as I walk into the front courtyard of Stevenson Taylor Hall, or should I say, Wayne Manor.”

Elsewhere on campus, Gailmarie Sujecki (Hon.), now Executive Assistant to the President and Director of Alumni Relations, was keeping a special piece of Webb’s film history stored in a safe in her office. She had the signatures from members of the Batman Forever cast. Among the signatures she remembers are Jim Carrey, who played the Riddler; Nicole Kidman, who played Dr. Chase Meridian; and Val Kilmer, the Bat himself. For someone who has spent 45 years at Webb, it remains one of the more unexpected stories in a career full of them.

“I had been here for 15 years at that point. Seeing the star power on campus was very exciting even though we were told to ‘not’ approach the actors as they were ‘in character’. Many of us would stay at Webb into the wee hours of the morning, peeking out of upstairs windows to get a glance at what was being filmed. One of the ‘thugs’ from the movie left their prop gun behind, and it’s stored safely in my office so I can share it with people, along with an artificial leaf that lined the driveway as the bat car came down the driveway. I also have the two documents signed by the actors and director, Joel Schumacher. Certainly, one of my special memories of Webb!”

Gotham kept coming back

Wayne Manor’s Webb address didn’t disappear when the credits rolled. The campus appeared again in Batman & Robin (1997), and Stevenson Taylor Hall later became Wayne Manor for the television series Gotham. Across different versions of Batman’s story, the same Glen Cove mansion kept getting the part.

Then came Joker (2019). In the scene where Arthur Fleck encounters a young Bruce Wayne through the gates of the Wayne estate, the iron gates on screen are Webb’s. Thousands of moviegoers have seen that moment without realizing that, just beyond the entrance, students are preparing to build the ships that move the world.

No audition required. Just a mansion filmmakers couldn’t forget.

About that Batcave

We’re going to leave a little mystery in Wayne Manor. There is a space inside Stevenson Taylor Hall that generations of Webbies have called the Batcave. The nickname stuck and it’s one of those campus details that is much more fun to discover in person than to read about.

Come for a tour. Ask your guide. We’ll let the Batcave speak for itself.

Engineering by day, Wayne Manor by Night… and on Camera

Why does a small engineering college care so much about Batman Day? Partly because Webb has plenty of Batman fans. And partly because filmmaking, like engineering, invites you to look behind the finished product and ask: How did they make that work?

Movie crews saw Webb’s stonework, gates, lawn and found Wayne Manor. Webbies saw the cameras arrive, cheered Robin through another take and went back to learning how to design ships. For a brief moment, two very different kinds of builders shared the same campus.

On Saturday, September 19, 2026 fans everywhere will celebrate the Dark Knight. Here at Webb, we’ll celebrate from the place that helped bring his world to the screen with students on campus, ships to design and a Batcave you’ll have to see for yourself.

Happy Batman Day from Webb Institute!