Cooper Union

As a young man Cooper overcame his own lack of formal education to become an accomplished inventor and entrepreneur. He designed and built the country’s first steam-powered locomotive, the Tom Thumb, and later founded the Canton Iron Works in Baltimore. By the mid-nineteenth century Cooper had amassed a considerable fortune.

Cooper established his namesake college in order to create opportunities for people from working backgrounds. Housed in the newly-constructed Foundation Building in Lower Manhattan, Cooper Union offered a curriculum designed for students interested in pursuing careers in architecture and the sciences. The school initially conducted classes only at night so that men who held jobs could attend, but it soon added a daytime schedule for women.

In addition to a formal course of study, Cooper Union also provided educational access to the general public. The basement of the Foundation Building contained the Great Hall, a spacious reading room stocked with newspapers and journals. The first free library in New York City, the Great Hall quickly became an intellectual refuge for residents of the Lower East Side. Frequent visitors included a young Austrian immigrant named Felix Frankfurter, who would one day sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cooper believed that open debate played a crucial role in promoting democratic ideals. From the beginning, his college served as a public forum. In February 1860, Abraham Lincoln delivered his landmark “Might Makes Right” address in the Great Hall. The speech catapulted Lincoln to new heights in the national consciousness and helped him win the Presidency later that year. Over the next century and a half, such figures as Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt and Barack Obama spoke at Cooper Union.

In the early twentieth century, Cooper Union emerged as an informal headquarters for the burgeoning progressive movement. In 1909, the Great Hall hosted the first conference of the newly-formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). During this period Cooper Union helped propel the growth of the American labor movement by offering a meeting site for union members. The early suffragists also found a welcome gathering place within its walls.

In the twenty-first century Cooper Union remains true to its founder’s ideals. In the face of sweeping economic, political and societal changes the school continues to uphold its core principle — that education should be innovative, affordable and available to everyone.

Contributors: Maha Tazi, Stephen Meyer