Print Size: 24" x 36" 9Frame Size: 24" x 36") Architect: Frederick A. Peterson,under the direction of peter Cooper New York, NY 1859
Cooper Union Foundation Building is a monumental brownstone pile that occupies an irregular city block in the East Village of Manhattan. The sedate Italianate facades, completed after six years of construction, offer little hint of the building’s landmark importance in education, building technology, social and political history.
The school opened in 1859 as the first privately funded, zero-tuition college in the United States, offering higher education to anyone who could pass the entry exam. The “Union” was created to repay the ordinary people whose labors had built the fortunes of founder Peter Cooper: businessman, industrialist, partner of Samuel F.B.Morse in laying America’s first Atlantic cable, prolific inventor of the Tom Thumb, America’s first steam railroad engine, steel railroad ties --- and what would become known as Jell-O.
A precursor of skeletal steel frame construction, the Foundation Building was the first in New York to use structural wrought iron I-beams, which were customized from Cooper’s railroad rails and produced in his own Trenton Iron Works. Other innovations included the building’s passenger lift (a forerunner of Otis elevator) and an elaborate ventilation system wherein a giant fan forced fresh air into vents under each of the 2,000 seats in the Great Hall. Over the years, this basement level gathering space (the largest in New York upon completion) has been the historic stage for Susan B. Anthony, Mark Twain, William Jennings Bryan and other prominent speakers, including U.S. presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Bill Clinton.
The multifunction building originally housed ground-floor shops, the rent from which was used to defray operating expenses for school facilities above. Originally five stories high, the building has been enlarged and remodeled in part.
