The Peter Cooper Monument - Cooper Square

 

By the middle of the 19th century, Peter Cooper was one of the most successful and wealthiest men in the country.  Yet he suffered a nagging self-consciousness over his lack of education.  To provide the means by which other lower-class children could receive an education, he conceived of a free teaching institution based on the concept of a polytechnic school in Paris.  Education should be, he said "as free as water and air." He set about planning a school for the "boys and girls of this city, who had no better opportunity than I."

The cornerstone for Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art was laid in 1854.  The total cost of purchasing the site and erecting the structure would cost Cooper, according to The New York Times, “$700,000 in gold.”  Cooper included a free library in his building so that the general public, not only the students, could have access to information and learning.  In a letter to his Trustees, he wrote “I desire to make this institution contribute in every way to aid the efforts of youth to acquire useful knowledge, and to find and fill that place in the community, where their capacity and talents can be usefully employed, with the greatest possible advantage to themselves and the community in which they live.”

Almost immediately following Cooper's death in April 1883, talk circulated about a fitting memorial.  But achieving it would be a long and sometimes rocky road.  In 1887 $30,000 had been donated by the public for the work--just under $850,000 in today's money.  The Sun explained, "Little tin boxes were distributed all over the city," for the purpose.  A committee of 12 artists and art critics, headed by millionaire Orlando B. Potter, approved the designs of sculptor Wilson Macdonald and awarded him the contract.

Deciding on an appropriate site was proving difficult.  On May 29, 1887 The New York Times reported that neither the area directly in front or in back of Cooper Union was deemed right.  "The triangle south of Cooper Institute was objectionable because pedestrians seldom passed on that side of either street and the elevated roads obscured the view; the area to the north of the Institute was objectionable for the latter reason."

But a larger problem soon loomed.  The New York Times reported, "dissensions occurred in the committee, and Mr. Macdonald abandoned the project." Cooper's son, Edward, and his widow Sarah, negotiated a price of $10,000 with Macdonald "for the surrender of his contract."  They personally paid him in order to keep the monument fund intact.

Edward Cooper told reporters on May 28, 1887, "One of the sculptors of whom the committee is thinking was a pupil of Cooper Institute and a devoted friend of its founder.  If he shall prove to be the man for the work there seem[s] to be an especial fitness in his selection."  That artist was Augustus Saint-Gaudens.  But he would not receive the commission until 1892.

Two years later, on January 29, 1894, The New York Times commented, "the subject of a statue to the philanthropist has been almost completely forgotten by the public" adding, "Mr. St. Gaudens has spent much study and care upon the statue, however."  In the meantime, discussions continued regarding the site, and by February 1895 "the little green triangle" behind Cooper Union, once deemed "objectionable," was approved.

Finally, 13 years after Cooper's death, the foundry was at work on the statue, and construction of the stone monument had begun.  On November 21, 1896 The Sun reported that the statue "is of heroic size, representing Mr. Cooper seated in an armchair.  Mr. St. Gaudens is of the opinion that it is one of the best things he has done.  The face particularly is very true to life, and members of the family say that it is very good."

The statue would sit in a canopy designed by Stanford White.  The Sun said, "It will be made of Italian marble, and will be in the form of steps rising to a heavy base, upon which the statue will stand."

On May 29, 1897 the monument was unveiled "with simple but impressive ceremonies," according to The New York Times.  They began in the great hall of Cooper Union with memorial addresses by several prominent citizens.  Grandstands had been erected on the triangular plot now deemed Cooper Square.  "The balconies of the great building were filled with ladies, along the elevated railroad tracks was a line of employe[e]s, while on all sides, kept back by a strong police force, was a jammed-up mass of curious humanity," said The New York Times.  The Seventh Regiment marching band paraded from its Armory down Third Avenue to the site.

New-York Tribune, May 30, 1897 (copyright expired)

Four-year-old Candace Hewitt, the great-granddaughter of Peter Cooper, "gave a tug at the rope which was to pull away the covering flags from the monument.  Her little hands were not strong enough to make much of an impression, but there were stronger hands ready to aid her, and the flags were drawn away quickly," wrote the New-York Tribune.  "When the bronze statue of Peter Cooper was revealed to gaze, the spectators cheered loudly and long."

Among those in the crowd that day was playwright and journalist Joseph I. C. Clarke.  In his 1925 autobiography My Life and Memories, he recalled that after the crowd left, "I stood admiring the truth to life of the seated figure under its stone canopy, stalwart democracy in the grasp of the staff, and benevolence, clear-sighted, luminous on face and brow."

Clarke suddenly realized that standing next to him was Augustus Saint-Gaudens, "gazing as wistfully at his statue as I had been."  The sculptor had been essentially ignored throughout the ceremonies, according to Clarke.  Saint-Gaudens commented, "The canopy, you know, is by Stanford White.  You can always rely on him to do something good."

After a pause he continued, "It's a trying moment, that first instant when you feel that now every man who passes is your critic, and you wonder if you have really done your best."

Clarke replied, "Rest, perturbed spirit.  You have docketed Peter Cooper for immortality."

Clarke remembered Saint-Gaudens's reaction. "'Flatterer!' he said, and swung down the street still smiling.  But it was not flattery."

from the collection of the Library of Congress

It was not long before vandals struck the monument of the revered philanthropist.  On June 16, 1899 The Sun reported that the statue "had been defaced, presumably by relic hunters."  The bronze letters that formed the inscription on the face of the monument were tempting and valuable targets.  "Sixteen of the letters have been pried off and parts of other decorations on the statue have also disappeared," said the article.  "It is said that a letter disappears from the statue every few weeks."

On June 24, 1901 a letter to the editor of The New York Times said sarcastically:

It would be a delight to some student of hieroglyphics to take a trip down to the Cooper Institute some day and try to decipher the inscription on the front of the Peter Cooper Statue.  Supposed to represent a dedication of the monument, it looks like anything but that with half of the letters missing.  A stranger coming to New York might wonder why the city spends its money on powder and shell for departing live 'greatnesses' instead of to repair at a slight cost a monument to one of its foremost sons.  But that is another story.

A letter to the editor of The Evening World a month later said in part, "Yet half of the letters of the grimy tablet are broken off or defaced, and to out-of-town visitors it looks as if Cooper were a forgotten has-been, instead of one of America's greatest benefactors.  For sheer shame let us brace up and do his memory the honor of at least cleaning and re-lettering his tablet."

photograph by Jim Henderson

It would not be until 1935, when Cooper Square was reconstructed, that the monument was cleaned and restored.  It was conserved again in 1987 under the Adopt-a-Monument Program.

A commemoration ceremony was held on May 29, 1997 presided over by Parks Commissioner Henry Stern and Cooper Union President John Jay Iselin.  Reminiscent of the 1897 unveiling, the United States Merchant Marine Academy Band played.  Among the speakers was Peter Cooper's great-great-grandson, Edward R. Hewitt.

 photographs by the author

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The Lost Cooper-Hewitt House - 9 Lexington Avenue

 

image via ringwoodmanor.org

In the first decades of the 19th century Peter Cooper almost single-handedly constructed his wooden house at the corner of 8th Street and Fourth Avenue.  (He moved the house 20 blocks to the north in 1820.)   By 1846, the 55-year-old had come a long way.  He had invented the Tom Thumb, the first steam locomotive in America; served as a city alderman; ran a highly successful glue factory; owned the Canton Iron Works and the West Point Foundry; and held several patents.  That year he erected a stately mansion at 9 Lexington Avenue, one block north of fashionable Gramercy Park.

Peter Cooper, from the collection of the Library of Congress.

Three stories tall above an English basement, the residence was designed in the emerging Italianate style.  A broad stone stoop rose to the centered entranceway (the enframement of which clung to the waning Greek Revival style).  The elliptically arched openings wore what appear to be cast iron lintels, and atop the roof was a quaint belvedere.

Cooper and his wife, the former Sarah Raynor Bedell, had two children, Edward and Sarah Amelia (known familiarly by her middle name).  Two years before moving into the mansion, the family had nearly lost Edward.

A student at Columbia College, he traveled to Europe in 1843 with his mathematics professor, Abram Stevens Hewitt.  On the return voyage a year later, they were shipwrecked.  Hewitt returned the young man safely home and he became a close friend of the family.  He visited the house often, both officially (he continued to tutor Edward) and as a guest.  By 1850 a romance was blossoming between Hewitt and Sarah Amelia, and in 1855 they were married in the Lexington Avenue mansion.

The newlyweds initially moved to Trenton, New Jersey, where Hewitt and Edward Cooper co-managed Peter Cooper's Trenton Ironworks (later renamed Cooper & Hewitt).  But in 1858, the Hewitts were listed at 9 Lexington Avenue with the Cooper family.   The couple would have seven children.

The families summered at Ringwood, the 19,000-acre estate purchased by Peter Cooper in 1853.  The purchase had a pragmatic side to it, since the property guaranteed a supply of iron ore for the foundry.  

The sprawling main house on the Ringwood estate.  image via ringwoodmanor.org.

Perhaps because of his own limited education, Peter Cooper strongly endorsed adult education.  He professed that education should be "as free as water and air."  In 1853 he broke ground for the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.  Abram Hewitt was closely involved.  He supervised the construction, which was completed in 1859.   Cooper's endowment made the school free for working class students.  In a revolutionary step, he welcomed women and Blacks as students.  The school included a free library and a massive lecture hall.  

Cooper became active in the anti-slavery movement and was a vigorous supporter of the Union cause during the war.  He was, as well, concerned with the Indian Reform movement and helped organize the United States Indian Commission, dedicated to the protection and "elevation" of Native Americans.

An ardent proponent of paper currency, Peter Cooper helped found the Greenback Party and in 1876 was its candidate for President.  His political stance made his mansion the target for one journalist, Francis R. Porter, in 1880.  On December 11, The New York Times reported that Porter, "who smashed the windows in the vestibule of the residence of the Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, at No. 9 Lexington-avenue, in order, as he said, to revenge himself on the venerable Peter Cooper, was arraigned on an indictment accusing him of malicious mischief."

The article noted, "The prisoner, in conversation with the court officers, said he expected to realize a handsome revenue from the sale of his paper.  The trial, he said, would be a spicy one.  George Francis Train and himself, he said, would have Mr. Cooper and Mr. Hewitt on the witness stand."

On April 4, 1883 Peter Cooper died in the mansion.   His funeral was held in All Souls' Unitarian Church nearby at 20th Street and Fourth (later Park) Avenue.

In the meantime, Abram S. Hewitt had entered politics in 1874 when he was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives.  Two years after his father-in-law's death, in 1885, the Hewitts hired architect Stanford White to remodel the Lexington Avenue mansion.  He removed the now-outdated stoop, and lowered the entrance to a the former basement level.  Because the doorway was now below sidewalk level, the columned portico, which provided a balcony to what had had been the entrance, took on rather squat proportions.  

from Old Buildings of New York City, 1907, (copyright expired)

The New York Sun deemed the 35-room Hewitt mansion "Probably the most artistic as well as beautiful house in New York," saying it "has been thoroughly remodeled and refurnished from top to bottom."  Stanford White had designed the interiors in French motifs, so popular in the 1890's.

"The great drawing room, which is perfectly square, is decorated in Louis XVI style, and for the most part is furnished with articles of the same period," said the article.  The walls were covered in crimson damask silk, which matched the draperies.  From the domed ceiling hung a large alabaster lamp, mounted in gilded bronze.  The New York Sun said, "Among the exquisite articles in the room is a Louis XV harp, gilded and carved, with its sounding board covered with beautifully painted flowers and musical instruments."

Adjoining the great drawing room was the Louis XV style "small drawing room."  The article said, "in its furniture are seen three distinct styles in vogue during the reign of that monarch."  The walls were covered in greenish-gray silk, and the silk draperies were an exact copy of the "bedroom hangings designed by Phillippe de la Salle and presented to the Dauphin, afterward Louis XVI" upon his marriage to Marie Antoinette.

Departing from the French motif was the Renaissance style dining room.  The wood paneled ceiling and walls were copied from a baronial mansion in England.  The New York Sun said, "The carved furniture and window hangings are an exact reproduction of the period.  Crimson is the prevailing tint."  Most notable was the painted frieze of women and children playing with fruits and flowers.  "It was purchased by Mr. Hewitt off the walls of a decaying Venetian palace."

Stanford White transformed the original entrance into a stately balcony with chest-high railings.  The gas lamps were added during Hewitt's term as mayor.  from the collection of the Library of Congress

On March 4, 1887, Abram S. Hewitt took office as mayor of New York City.  With his new role, the Lexington Avenue mansion was expectedly host to prestigious figures.  But perhaps none was more distinguished than the guest of honor at an afternoon reception on May 21, 1887, Queen Kapiolani of Hawaii.  The New York Times reported, "The house was handsomely decorated, and the broad marble stairway leading from the entrance hall to the main drawing rooms was appropriately flanked with incense-breathing clusters of Spring blossoms."

The Queen and her substantial entourage arrived about 4:30.  "She was met at the door by the Mayor, who escorted her upstairs to where Mrs. Hewitt and her daughters, assisted by the Misses Cooper, were engaged in welcoming their guests."  Only a few others had arrived, but by 5:00, said the article, "they began coming thick and fast, and the Mayor was kept busy introducing New-York's fair women and brave men to her Majesty, who expressed herself as delighted with everything she saw."

It was an highly important social and political incident and any glitch could have international ramifications.  Outside was an army of police officers who kept everyone within a two-block radius moving along.  The streets were closed to any vehicles except those bringing guests.

In the winter of 1899, the Hewitts had a prominent houseguest.  On February 24 The New York Times reported, "Lord Charles Beresford is the guest of ex-Mayor Hewitt at his residence, 9 Lexington Avenue, where he will remain about a fortnight."  The article added, "It will be remembered that Mr. Hewitt, when Mayor, married at the City Hall, Lord Charles Beresford's present sister-in-law, Lady William Beresford, to the late Duke of Marlborough."

A year earlier, on February 17, 1898, the Hewitts had given a most innovative entertainment.  The New York Times explained it "took place in the form of a 'plant party," and was attended "by several hundred of the city's wealthiest and most fashionable people."  Each of the well-dressed guests represented a vegetable.  The article said:

The edifying spectacle of richly costumed and bejeweled women carrying about on their persons imitations of various representatives of the vegetable kingdom, from squash and lettuce to meteor roses and orchids, and of men in conventional evening dress, with similar additions, was something enough out of the ordinary to interest the people concerned, and also plenty of others who were not favored with invitations.

At the time, the Hewitts' unmarried daughters Sara and Eleanor had taken their places in high society, as evidenced in an announcement in The New York Times on March 17, 1901:

Perhaps the most original entertainment of the coming week will be that to be given on Tuesday evening by the Misses Hewitt at their residence, 9 Lexington Avenue.  There will be a little play, and an especially good opera singer has been engaged to sing.

In December 1902 Abram S. Hewitt became afflicted with obstructive jaundice.  On January 11, 1903, his doctors released a statement saying, "Mr. Hewitt has continued to grow progressively weaker.  He sleeps most of the time, and suffers little pain."  The extended family members were called to the house.

Newspapers published daily updates on his condition.  On January 13, for instance, The New York Times rather insensitively reported, "The condition of ex-Mayor Abram S. Hewitt, who lies near death's door at his residence...remained practically unchanged at 2 o'clock this morning."

Hewitt lingered until January 18.  According to reports, he removed the oxygen tube, which had helped him breathe, from his mouth and uttered, "And now, I am officially dead."   His funeral was held on January 21, The New York Times describing the services as "doubly impressive in their dignified simplicity and the absence of all ostentation."  

The Hewitt mansion as it appeared around the time of the former Mayor's death.  image via ringwoodmanor.org.

Sarah Amelia and her unmarried daughters lived on in the mansion.  Following the tragic sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic on April 15, 1912, Sarah and her daughter-in-law Mary (the wife of Edward Hewitt) helped organize the Women's Relief Committee.  Within four days the group had collected more than $12,000--around $330,000 today--to help the survivors.  On April 19 The Evening World noted, "the next meeting of the Women's Relief Committee will be held to-morrow morning at 11 o'clock in the home of Mrs. Abram S. Hewitt, No. 9 Lexington avenue."

Sarah Amelia Cooper Hewitt photo via ringwoodmanor.org

The group was Sarah's last philanthropic effort.  She died at Ringwood Manor on August 14, 1912.  The Evening World reported that she had "inherited $3,000,000 from her husband."  That amount would top $82.5 million today.

The New York Times reported, "Under her will...Sarah C. and Eleanor G. Hewitt [receive] equal shares in 9 Lexington Avenue, and its furnishings."  Each of her children received 600 acres of Ringwood Major "that her children might also live near each other in the country."  

The will also instructed Sarah and Eleanor "to collect all papers relating to their grandfather, Peter Cooper, and their father, Mayor Hewitt, and to edit these in the form of biographies, of which they should hold the copyrights."  It directed that all profits from those books should "be used in decorating the museum of the Cooper Institute."

The Hewitt sisters never married.  They acted in unison, appearing in society pages always as the Misses Hewitt.  In listing the events of the week on January 24, 1915, for instance, The Sun noted, "FRIDAY--The Misses Hewitt, 9 Lexington avenue, a musicale."  

Passionately conservative, they hosted a meeting of the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage in the house in April 1918.

from the collection of the Library of Congress.

Eleanor, known to the family as Nellie, died in 1924.  Six years later, on October 16, 1930, Sarah died in the Lexington Avenue mansion, "where she had been confined to her bed since an operation performed in 1928," according to The New York Times.  Sarah was 71 years old.

Of her siblings, only Erskine and Edward Hewitt survived her.  Erskine was the principal beneficiary of her nearly $6 million estate.  She was generous to two of the servants.  William Donnelley received a bequest of $200,000 in today's money, and Anna Engesser received, "a bequest of $1,000 and the income from a fund of $30,000."  The trust fund would equal about $600,000 today.

Erskine was the youngest of the Hewitt children.  Never married, he moved into the Lexington Avenue house and maintained a summer estate on Lake Cupsaw in Passaic County, New Jersey.  He died in the country home on May 22, 1938 at the age of 67.

Six months later, the mansion was opened to the public for a three-day auction--from November 9 through the 11th.  The New York Sun reported, "A quantity of the original rosewood and mahogany furniture, placed in the house when it was built, appears in the sale.  Most of this is in the American Empire style and is found both in the bedrooms and downstairs rooms."

A demolition permit for the property was granted in 1939.  But it survived until 1948 when it was razed to make way for a modern apartment building The Park Gramercy, designed by Boak & Raad, completed in 1951.

photo via compass.com

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The Lost Peter Cooper House -- No. 401 Park Avenue So.

 

In 1904 Charles Frederick William Mielatz created a charming watercolor of the former house for the Society of Iconophiles from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In 1800, Peter Cooper was nine years old and working as a carriage marker’s apprentice.  He had already learned the basics of several trades – beer brewing, hat making, and carpentry. What he had not learned was correct spelling and formal arithmetic. The son of a working man, he had only one year of schooling.   He would, nevertheless, go on to greatness as an industrialist, inventor, philanthropist and Presidential candidate.

A few years later he personally helped construct a handsome frame house for himself at the corner of 8^th Street and Fourth Avenue.  Graphite magazine wrote a century later, in January 1909, that the house was “built largely by the personal labor of the famous Peter Cooper, carpenters at the time being scarce.  It was erected without nails, since these were too expensive, being put together with wooden pegs.”

Two stories tall, the Cooper house presented an imposing presence.  A hip roof with a central gable gave the home a refined air.  But the house would not remain long in its original location.

In his 1896 Nooks & Corners of Old New York historian Charles Hemstreet recalled “Peter Cooper himself superintended the removal of the house in 1820, and directed its establishment on the new site so that it should be reconstructed in a manner that should absolutely preserve its original form.”  (Later, in 1854, Cooper would begin construction of his famous Cooper Union on the original site of the house.)

The “new site” was on the corner of the Boston Post Road and the Albany Turnpike in the Kips Bay area.  These dirt roads would later become Fourth Avenue and 28^th Street.  Graphite magazine remembered “At that time it was surrounded by a peach orchard, and was about two miles from the nearest school, which was located on the Bowery.”  Cooper’s purpose in relocating his home to the undeveloped spot was obvious within the year. 

Not far away near the East River were slaughterhouses.  Cooper had purchased the rights to a glue-making process which he improved with his own invention.  In 1821 he purchased a glue factory from “Mr. Vreeland” on Sunfish Pond for $2,000—in the neighborhood of $42,000 today, an indication of his growing fortune.  Sunfish Pond was in Kips Bay, fed by Sunfish Creek that flowed along what would become 32nd Street.  The proximity to the slaughterhouses provided him with the necessary bones, tissues and fats needed for his glue.  Before long he had a virtual monopoly on the American glue business.

Sunfish Pond still existed in 1865 when Viele's water map was published.

By 1846 Cooper’s inventions, political involvements, and various businesses had made him a well-known and extremely wealthy figure in New York.  That year, according to Valentine’s Manual of Old New York, he became “the first to appreciate the advantages which the Park offered as a place of residence.”  “The Park” was the newly completed Gramercy Park.  Cooper purchased lots at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 22^nd Street and erected a striking mansion at 9 Lexington Avenue; leaving his beloved wooden house behind.

In 1888 Ewing Galloway photographed the corner (probably to document the ongoing brick paving of Fourth Avenue).  Wooden crosswalks protect the hems of ladies' dresses from mud.  A. Stern operates his dry goods store here, while next door is a fish and oyster market.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

By now the Kips Bay neighborhood was fully developed.  Within a decade or so following Cooper’s leaving the house, it was converted for commercial purposes.  The first floor walls were removed to accommodate broad Victorian show windows and shop fronts.  Over the next half century it would house various businesses—at one point a coal and wood dealer shared the space with dry goods dealer A. Stern, who placed a prominent advertisement for R & G Corsets on the façade.  By the last years of the century a restaurant and candy store had taken over the entire ground floor.

 

Graphite magazine published an old photograph following the building's removal. (January 1910, copyright expired)

Peter Cooper died in 1883, and the old house became the property of his son-in-law and former Mayor, Abram Stevens Hewitt.  Abram and Sarah Amelia Hewitt maintained a sprawling summer estate in Ringwood, New Jersey, near Tuxedo.  When Hewitt considered improving the valuable Avenue property in 1894, Sarah stepped in.  Following in her father’s footsteps, she proposed moving her childhood home to the Ringwood Manor grounds.

On July 12, 1894 the Sacramento Daily Union reported “The house at Fourth avenue and Twenty-eighth street, New York, in which Peter Cooper lived once, is to be carefully taken down, removed and re-built on the property of Abram S. Hewitt, at Ringwood, N.J.”

 

A large horseshoe sign hangs above the restaurant around the turn of the century.  The fish market still operates next door.  photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The tenants in all the buildings on the eastern block front of Fourth Avenue (later Park Avenue South) between 27^th and 28^th Streets were given notice and by October 1894 all the buildings were vacant.  Hewitt had agreed with the American Lithographic Company to put up a $550,000 building for the firm, which in turn would pay $75,000 a year rent.  Then, with no reason given, it was announced on October 10 that the deal “has fallen through.”

The reprieve of the old “Cooper mansion” would last little more than a decade.  On June 6, 1909 The Sun reported on the proposed construction of “modern fireproof buildings of handsome type, including the two twelve-story ‘twin’ buildings to be erected for the Cooper-Hewitt heirs on the old Peter Cooper holding on Fourth avenue from Twenty-seventh to Twenty-eighth street.”

Now widowed, Sarah Amelia Cooper and her daughters took up the cause of preserving the century-old house.  The Los Angeles Herald, on May 22, 1909, reported that the “old homestead” had “been purchased by the Misses Hewitt, granddaughters of Mr. Cooper, and will be moved to the Cooper estate, Ringwood Manor, near Tuxedo, where it will be restored to the condition it was in when occupied by Mr. Cooper and his bride.”  The newspaper added, “It has been one of the sights for visitors to New York.”

 

photograph by Wall Street Journal

The massive office building that replaced the old structures on the block gives no hint today that once the wooden home of one of Manhattan’s greatest figures was dismantled and reconstructed here, in what was then virtually farmland.

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The 1859 Cooper Union

Nine-year old Peter Cooper, in 1800, had already learned the basics of several trades – beer brewing, hat making, and carpentry. What he had not learned was correct spelling and formal arithmetic. The son of a working man, he had only one year of schooling. While Cooper had no formal education, he would go on to greatness. Yet his lack of education would always haunt him.

That year the young Peter Cooper was working as an carriage-maker’s apprentice. He exhibited an amazing skill and innovativeness. To sharpen his innate talents the boy sought an accessible school where he could learn scientific techniques, geometry, and theory. There was no such institution.

Cooper would go on to design and build the first steam railroad engine in the country, open a glue factory and an iron foundry, invent powdered gelatin (which, when his wife added fruit for flavor became known as Jello) and increased his growing fortune through real estate, insurance, the new telegraph, and railroading.

By the middle of the 19th century, Cooper was one of the most successful and wealthiest men in the country. Yet he suffered a nagging self-consciousness over his lack of education. To provide the means by which other lower-class children could receive an education, he conceived of a free teaching institution based on the concept of a polytechnic school in Paris.

Education should be, he said "as free as water and air." He set about planning a school for the "boys and girls of this city, who had no better opportunity than I."

The cornerstone for Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art was laid in 1854. The total cost of purchasing the site and erecting the structure would cost Cooper, according to The New York Times, “$700,000 in gold.”

Designed by Frederick A. Peterson, the German neo-Romanesque structure was completed in 1859 and described by James B. McCabe, Jr. in 1882 as “a plain but massive and imposing edifice of brownstone, six stories high, with a large basement below the level of the streets.”

Cooper used his own innovations in the construction of the Union.  He used rolled, wrought-iron beams from his foundry, arranged in a light grid, to support the floors. By utilizing thinner piers than the customary heavy stone arches, he increased the usable space of the lower levels, including the main hall.

Even before the building was completed the Great Hall was used for speeches, rallies and lectures.  Rental from the public spaces was intended to contribute heavily to the operation of the school.  The 900-seat space would soon see reformers and politicians like Henry Ward Beecher, William Cullen Bryant and William Lloyd Garrison thundering against slavery and defending the Union.  Here, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln gave the powerful speech that is generally credited with earning him the nomination for the Presidency.

“The course instruction is very thorough,” said James McCabe, “the ablest teachers being employed, and the standard of scholarship is high. Searching and rigid examinations test the proficiency of the pupils, and the graduates are sent forth into the world thoroughly prepared in the branches taught here.”

Among the relatively early graduates of the art school were Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Adolph A. Weinman and Leo Friedlander; Thomas Edison and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter were students.

Cooper included a free library in his building so that the general public, not only the students, could have access to information and learning. In a letter to his Trustees, he wrote “I desire to make this institution contribute in every way to aid the efforts of youth to acquire useful knowledge, and to find and fill that place in the community, where their capacity and talents can be usefully employed, with the greatest possible advantage to themselves and the community in which they live.”

In 1882 the library contained over 15,000 volumes; by 1932 the number had grown to 67,000 with another 17,000 in the more recent art library.

Operating costs went far beyond teacher salaries and books. In the 1868 report, maintenance costs included “14,000 gas-burners in the building, and when they are all lighted the consumption of gas is very great. A large number of engravings have been framed and hung upon all the walls in the Institute. Additions have been made to the furniture of the upper schoolrooms. Speaking-tubes have been placed throughout the building. A hose has been placed on each floor for the purpose of suppressing any conflagration that might break out on the floors, though the building is fire-proof. A catalogue of the library is now printing for the first time.”

To cover the expenses, in addition to Cooper’s endowment and the rentals of the public spaces, donations flowed in from other wealthy New Yorkers such as Andrew Carnegie and Abram Hewitt.

When Peter Cooper died in on April 12, 1883, he left $100,000 to the operation of Cooper Union. His legacy never faltered with his passing.

On February 3, 1902 a letter to the Editor of The New York Times expressed the gratitude of a graduate. “Fairly prosperous now, I am glad to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Cooper Union. Twenty-seven years ago, when a young man, alone in New York, without the restraints of home and without a relative within a thousand miles of me, for two Winters I attended evening drawing classes at Cooper Union and am glad to say with thousands of other New Yorkers, ‘God Bless Peter Cooper. Keep his memory green.’”

By the 1920s the once grand residential area around the Cooper Union had grown seedy. Yet the Union and its programs remained proud. The New York Times, on December 5, 1920, wrote “Those who are accustomed to regard the Bowery as a street given over to tramps, gunmen and sensation seekers could study with some advantage the current activities of Cooper Union, the Bowery’s educational centre, splendid monument as it is to the foresight and liberality of a poor New York boy who when he had grown rich, did not forget his early struggles, and sympathized with the hoes and ambitions of those who were traveling the same long, hard, broken road to an independent competence.”

Over the years Presidents Grant, Cleveland, Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, Clinton and Obama would follow Lincoln’s lead, speaking in the Great Hall. Here the NAACP and the Red Cross were organized.

Over a century and a half after Peter Cooper acted on his dream, the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art continues to provide full tuition for every student.