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Meet Peter Cooper
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of
Science and Art,
established in 1859 in Manhattan, New York, is among the
nation's oldest and
most distinguished institutions of higher education. The college
offers an
unparalleled education in art, architecture and
engineering, and has
given every admitted student a full tuition scholarship for 150
years. It was
founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist, Peter
Cooper.
Cooper
(1791-1883) was a workingman's son who had less than a year of
formal
schooling. Yet he went on to become an industrialist and an
inventor. Cooper
made his fortune with a glue factory and an iron foundry. Later,
he turned his
entrepreneurial skills to successful ventures in real estate,
insurance,
telegraphy, and railroads. It was Peter Cooper who designed and
built America's
first steam locomotive, the Tom Thumb. Cooper also invented
instant gelatin
(for which he received a patent in 1845).
As a boy, Peter Cooper
learned
carpentry, beer brewing, and hat and coach making; but he was
acutely aware of
his lack of "even a common education." Though he later became
one of
America's richest men, he could not spell. In 1800, as a
nine-year-old
apprentice carriage-maker in New York City, he had
unsuccessfully sought a
place where he could learn scientific techniques and theory to
supplement his
innate inventiveness and manual skill.
As he grew up, Cooper
never forgot his
beginnings or his lack of education. He thought children of
immigrants and the
working class deserved access to education. Believing that
education should be
"as free as water and air" he spent the last 30 years of his
life
creating and nurturing a school for the "boys and girls of this
city, who
had no better opportunity than I."
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| Peter Cooper |
As one of the first colleges
to offer a
free education to working-class children and to women, Cooper
Union was a
pioneer long before access to education became public policy. At
first, Cooper
Union provided night classes for men and women in the applied
sciences and
architectural drawing.
In addition, the college's Female School
of Design, open
during the day, offered free art classes as well as training in
the new
occupations of photography, telegraphy, "type-writing" and
shorthand.
Those free classes — a landmark in American history and the
prototype for what
is now called continuing education — evolved into three
distinguished schools
that make up The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and
Art: the
School of Art, the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture and
the Albert Nerken
School of Engineering.
Cooper, however, founded more than a
college. From the
beginning, Cooper Union also provided a public reading room and
library, and a
meeting place for artists and inventors. In the historic
900-seat Great Hall,
the public heard social and political reformers as well as free
lectures on
science and government.
Today, the Great Hall continues as a
home for public
forums, cultural events and community activities. Cooper Union
is also the
place where Thomas Edison and Felix Frankfurter were students;
where the Red
Cross and NAACP were organized and where Susan B. Anthony had
her offices.
Peter Cooper's dream was to give talented young people the one
privilege he
lacked—a good education. He also wanted to make possible the
development of
talent that otherwise would have gone undiscovered.
Since 1859,
Cooper Union
has educated thousands of artists, architects and engineers,
many of them
leaders in their fields. “My hope is that the love and desire
for scientific
knowledge will cause unborn thousands to throng the hall of
Cooper Union to
learn the beauties and to obtain the benefits provided in nature
for the use
and elevation of mankind. These will be known and enjoyed where
men keep,
subdue and hold dominion over the world and all that is in it. I
trust the
young will here catch the inspiration of truth in all its native
power and
beauty and find in it a source of inexpressible pleasure to
spread its
transformed influence throughout the world."
Adapted
from:
http://cooper.edu/about-us/ | |||||||
Cooper Union todayClick on John I. Blair for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online. |
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