Location Fuertes is located on a hill on the North Campus of Cornell University, near Helen Newman. History Fuertes Observatory used to be used by Civil Engineering, as a field office for instruction.
Stars are important for navigation and for surveying, and so they used the observatory.
The observatory building was built around 1920. It replaced the one that was at the location of Barton Hall at the time, as to move farther out from the lights of campus. Before the Fuertes Observatory was in built on North Campus, there was an observatory where Barton Hall is currently located. And even before that, there was a wooden observatory near Goldwin Smith Hall . Fuertes Observatory is named after Estevan Fuertes .