.jpg) The Cooper Union's Foundation Building atCooper Square andAstor Place in 2019 | |
| Type | Private college |
|---|---|
| Established | 1859; 166 years ago (1859) |
| Accreditation | MSCHE |
| Endowment | $920 million (2021)[1] |
| President | Steven W. McLaughlin[2] |
Academic staff | 57 (full time) (2017/2018)[3][4][5][6] |
| Students | 800–900[7] |
| Location | Manhattan, New York City ,New York ,United States |
| Campus | Urban |
| Colors | Maroon and Gold |
| Website | cooper |
 | |
The Cooper Union | |
| Location | Cooper Square Manhattan, New York City |
| Built | 1858–59 |
| Architect | F.A. Peterson |
| NRHP reference No. | 66000540 |
| NYSRHP No. | 06101.000441 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966[8] |
| Designated NHL | July 4, 1961[9] |
| Designated NYSRHP | June 23, 1980 |
| Designated NYCL | March 15, 1966 |
 | |
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly known asCooper Union, is aprivate college onCooper Square inManhattan, New York City.Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supportedÉcole Polytechnique in France.[10][11][12] The school was built on a radical new model of American higher education based on Cooper's belief that an education "equal to the best technology schools established"[13] should be accessible to those who qualify, independent of their race, religion, sex, wealth or social status, and should be "open and free to all".[14]
The college is divided into three schools: the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, the School of Art, and the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. It offersundergraduate andmaster's degree programs exclusively in the fields ofarchitecture,fine arts (undergraduate only), andengineering as well as a shared core curriculum in the humanities and social sciences.
The Cooper Union was one of very few American institutions of higher learning to offer a full-tuition scholarship to every admitted student, a practice it discontinued in 2014, instead offering a half-tuition scholarship to each admitted student.[15] As of 2024[update], nearly half of its undergraduate students were attending on a tuition-free basis.[16] In September 2024 the school announced that for the next four years, all students (including current students) would not pay tuition for their senior year.[17][18]
The Cooper Union was founded in 1859[19] by American industrialistPeter Cooper, one of the richest businessmen in the United States. Cooper was a workingman's son who had less than a year of formal schooling. Despite this, he designed and built America's first steamrailroad engine and made a fortune with a glue factory and iron foundry. He was a principal investor and first president of theNew York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company, which laid the firsttransatlantic telegraph cable, and once ran forPresident under theGreenback Party, becoming the oldest person evernominated for the office by a political party.[20][21]
Cooper's dream was to give talented young people the one privilege he lacked: a good education from an institution which was "open and free to all".[22] To achieve these goals, Cooper designated the bulk of his wealth to The Cooper Union. According toThe New York Times in 1863, "It was rare that those of limited means, however eager they might be to acquire a knowledge of some of the higher branches of education, could obtain tuition in studies not named in the regular course taught in our public schools."[23] Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, or sex was expressly prohibited.[23]
Originally intended to be named simply "the Union", the Cooper Union began withadult education in night classes on the subjects ofapplied sciences andarchitectural drawing, as well as day classes primarily intended for women on the subjects of photography, telegraphy, typewriting andshorthand in what was called the college's Female School of Design. The early institution also had a free reading room open day and night, the first in New York City[24] (predating theNew York Public Library system),[25] and a new four-year nighttime engineering college for men and a few women.[26][27] In 1883, a five-year curriculum inchemistry was added as an alternative to the applied science (engineering) program.[28] A daytime engineering college was added in 1902, thanks to funds contributed byAndrew Carnegie.[26] Initial board members includedDaniel F. Tiemann,[29]John E. Parsons,[29]Horace Greeley andWilliam Cullen Bryant, and those who availed themselves of the institute's courses in its early days includedAugustus Saint-Gaudens,Thomas Alva Edison[30] andWilliam Francis Deegan.
The Cooper Union's free classes have evolved into three schools: the School of Art, the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, and the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. Since 1859, the Cooper Union has educated thousands of artists, architects, and engineers, many of them leaders in their fields.[31]
After 1864 there were a few attempts to merge Cooper Union andColumbia University, but these were never realized.[32]
TheCooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, was founded in 1897 as part of Cooper Union by Sarah, Eleanor, and Amy Hewitt, granddaughters of Peter Cooper.
.jpg)
Cooper Union's Foundation Building is an Italianatebrownstone building designed by architectFred A. Petersen, one of the founders of theAmerican Institute of Architects. It was the first structure in New York City to feature rolled-ironI-beams for structural support; Peter Cooper himself invented and produced these beams.[33] Petersen patented a fire-resistant hollow brick tile he used in the building's construction.[34][35] The building was the first in the world to be built with an elevator shaft, because Cooper, in 1853, was confident an elevator would soon be invented. However, he expected them to be cylindrical, so he designed the shaft in the shape of a circle.[36] The building was declared aNational Historic Landmark in 1961,[9][37][38] and aNew York City Landmark in 1965,[39] and added to theHistoric American Engineering Record in 1971.[40]
On February 27, 1860, the school's Great Hall, located in the basement level of the Foundation Building, became the site of a historic address byAbraham Lincoln.[41] "Lincoln made his address on a snowy night before about 1,500 persons."[42]
Widely reported in the press and reprinted throughout the North in pamphlet form, the speech galvanized support for Lincoln and contributed to his gaining the Party's nomination for thepresidency. It is now referred to as theCooper Union Address.[43]
Since then, the Great Hall has served as a platform for historic addresses byAmerican PresidentsGrant,Cleveland,[44]Taft,[45]Theodore Roosevelt,[46][47]Woodrow Wilson,[48][49][50] andBill Clinton. Clinton spoke on May 12, 1993, about reducing the federal deficit and again on May 23, 2006, as the Keynote Speaker at The Cooper Union's 147th Commencement, along withAnna Deavere Smith.[51][52] He appeared a third time on April 23, 2007, along with SenatorEdward Kennedy,Henry Kissinger,Norman Mailer, and others, at the memorial service for historianArthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Most recently,Barack Obama delivered an economic policy speech at Cooper Union's Great Hall on April 22, 2010.[53][54] On September 22, 2014, President of thePalestinian National AuthorityMahmoud Abbas delivered his first formal speech in English.[55]
Other historic speakers in the Great Hall have includedFrederick Douglass,Susan B. Anthony,Elizabeth Cady Stanton, andMark Twain.[56][57]
The Great Hall continues to serve as an important metropolitan art space and has hosted lectures and performances by such key figures asJoseph Campbell,Steve Reich,Salman Rushdie,Ralph Nader,Hamza Yusuf,Richard Stallman,Rudolph Giuliani,Pema Chodron,Michael Bloomberg,Evo Morales, and Venezuelan presidentHugo Chávez. When not occupied by external or hosted events, the Great Hall is made accessible to students and faculty for large lectures and recreational activities, including the school's annual Culture Show. In 1994, the Cooper Union Forum of Public Programs was honored with aVillage Award from theGreenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.[58]
In late 2008, the Great Hall was closed to students and outside events for the first major renovation of the hall since 1978. It reopened in March 2009.[59]
The Cooper Union maintains an archive of ephemera and recordings from events that have taken place in the Great Hall through the Voices from the Great Hall Digital Access Project.
The Cooper Union has schools in architecture,fine art, and engineering. At present, these three fields represent Cooper Union's degree programs. The Faculty of Humanities and Social Studies provides classes and faculty to all three programs.[60]
In 2002, the school decided to generate revenue by razing its engineering building and having it replaced with a commercial building, and replacing its Hewitt Building with a new building called41 Cooper Square.[61]
.jpg)
A new classroom, laboratory, and studio facility designed byThom Mayne replaced the aging Hewitt Academic Building at41 Cooper Square. In contrast to the Foundation Building, 41 Cooper Square is of modern, environmentally"green" design, housing nine above-ground floors and two basements. The structure features unconventional architectural features, including a full-height Grand Atrium, prevalent interior windows, a four-story linear central staircase, and upper-levelskyways, which reflect the design intention of inspiring, socially interactive space for students and faculty. In addition, the building's design allows for up to 75%natural lighting, further reducing energy costs. In 2010, 41 Cooper Square became the first academic and laboratory structure in New York City to meet Platinum-levelLEED standards for energy efficiency.[62] The building was funded in part by alumni donations, materialized in nameplates and other textual recognition throughout the building.[63]
Primarily designed to house the Cooper Union's School of Engineering and School of Art, the new building's first eight above-ground floors are populated by classrooms, small engineering laboratories, study lounges, art studio space, and faculty offices. The ninth, top floor is dedicated completely to School of Art studio and classroom space in addition to the art studio spaces located throughout the building. The lowest basement level consists almost completely of the school's large machine shops and design laboratories, as well as much of theHVAC and supplyinfrastructure. The building's first basement level houses primarily the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, a 198-capacitylecture hall and event space designed as a smaller, more modern alternative to the Great Hall.[64]
A substantial portion of the annual budget, which supports the full-tuition scholarships in addition to the school's costs, is generated through revenues from real estate. Its endowment is over $600 million.[65] The land under theChrysler Building is owned by the endowment,[65] and as of 2009, Cooper Union received $7 million per year from this parcel. Further, under a very unusual arrangement, New York City real-estate taxes assessed against the Chrysler lease, held byAby Rosen,[66] are paid to Cooper Union, not the city. This arrangement would be voided if Cooper Union sold the real estate. In 2006, Tishman Speyer signed a deal with the school to pay rent that has escalated to $32.5 million in 2018.[33]
Around October 29, 2011, rumors circulated the school was in serious financial trouble. On October 31, a series of open forums were held with students, faculty, and alumni to address a financial crisis.[67]
Current and past students voiced opposition to charging tuition.[68][69] The then-president of the school,Jamshed Bharucha, indicated depletion of the school's endowment required additional sources of funding. In 2012, the college announced approval from its board of trustees to attempt to establish a new tuition-based cross-disciplinary graduate program, expand its fee-based continuing education programs, and impose tuition on some students in its existing graduate programs.[70][71]
In December 2012, as a protest against the possibility of undergraduate tuition being charged, 11 students occupied a suite[72] in the Foundation Building for a week.[73] Charging high tuition was complicated by the school's lack of customary amenities offered by other high-tuition schools.[74]
The college ended its free tuition policy for undergraduates in 2014, but offers need-based tuition remission to incoming undergraduates on asliding scale.[75] On May 8, 2013, a group of students occupied President Bharucha's office in protest over news reports about ending free tuition. The administration, board of trustees, and those members of the Cooper Union community who had been occupying the Office of the President since early May reached an agreement that ended the occupation on July 12.[76]
Throughout 2013, 2014, and 2015, the committee to Save Cooper Union (CSCU) — a coalition of former and current students, alumni and faculty — campaigned to reverse this decision, urging the president and the board of trustees to return Cooper Union to "its tuition-free and merit-based mission, ensure the school’s fiscal recovery, and establish better governance structures."[77]
On September 1, 2015, the school and the CSCU announced the CSCU's lawsuit against the school's administration was resolved in the form of aconsent decree signed by Cooper Union, then-New York State'sAttorney GeneralEric Schneiderman, and the CSCU. The decree includes provisions for returning to a sustainable, tuition-free policy, increased board transparency, additional student, faculty and alumni trustees, an independent financial monitor appointed by the Attorney General, and a search committee to identify the next full-term president.[78][79][80]
On January 15, 2018, the Free Education Committee (FEC) of the school's Board of Trustees released their recommended plan to return to full-tuition scholarships for undergraduates only by the academic year starting in the fall of 2028.[81] In March 2018, the board released its approved, updated version with the same milestone.[82] In 2024, the school announced that approximately 83% of undergraduate tuition costs would be covered by scholarships in the 2024–2025 academic year and that they were proceeding as planned towards their goal of 100% coverage in the 2029 fiscal year.[83]
Admission to Cooper Union is highly competitive, with an acceptance rate of 12% across the three schools.[84][85]
| Academic rankings | |
|---|---|
| Baccalaureate | |
| Washington Monthly[86] | 1 |
| Regional | |
| U.S. News & World Report[87] | 2 |
The Cooper Union's School of Engineering is named in honor of Albert Nerken, a chemical engineering alumnus of the school.[88] Its enrollment includes about 550 students, and is the largest of the three schools by a significant margin. The school offersABET-accreditedBachelor of Engineering (BE) degree programs in core engineering fields and an interdisciplinaryBachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) degree. Opportunities are also available for engineering students to pursue minors in bioengineering, chemistry, computer science, humanities and social sciences, and mathematics.[89]
Specialized facilities for teaching and research include theMaurice Kanbar Center for Biomedical Engineering established in 2002[90][91] and the interdisciplinary Maker Space Lab, established in 2020 for the use of engineering, art, and architecture students.[92]
The School of Engineering offers master's degrees in chemical, civil, electrical, or mechanical engineering. Cooper Union undergraduate engineering students may earn a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in as little as five years.[93]
Consisting of roughly 200 students and 70 faculty members,[94] the Cooper Union School of Art offers aBachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree and a Certificate of Fine Arts.[95] As a member school ofAICAD, School of Art students may participate in exchange programs with the other colleges in the association, includingCalifornia Institute of the Arts andOtis College of Art and Design.[96]
The Cooper Union Art program is often referred to as "generalist" or "versatile" when compared to other Fine Arts colleges; incoming students do not choose anacademic major within the Fine Arts field, but instead are permitted and encouraged to select courses from any of the School of Art's departments.[97] The curriculum place heavy emphasis on each student's creative and imaginative abilities, rather than technical precision in a specific medium.[98]
Located in both public spaces and specialized rooms, Cooper Union's galleries provide space for installations and showcases by students, faculty, and guest artists.[99] Popular gallery locations include the Great Hall lobby in the Foundation Building and newly opened 41 Cooper Gallery in 41 Cooper Square, which provides a two-story high space for large, three-dimensional exhibitions and works visible from both the building lobby and 7th street through large plate-glass windows.[100]
In addition, numerous smaller exhibition spaces exist throughout both buildings on campus. Larger spaces on the upper floors of the Foundation Building are used primarily for interdisciplinary exhibitions with the School of Architecture. For presentations of video and digital media, the Great Hall and 41 Cooper Square's Rose Auditorium are used.[95]
The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union offers a five-year NAAB accredited program established byJohn Hejduk. The philosophical foundation of the school was directly committed to the "Social Contract" and dedicated to education as "one of the last places that protects freedom, and teaching as a sociopolitical act, among other things."[101] Among those other things were principles of free debate and theoretical discourse which drew source from deep wellsprings of lost histories such as theBauhaus school of Architecture founded byLudwig Mies van der Rohe.
The faculty includes architects, design and construction managers such asPeter Eisenman,Samuel Anderson,Nader Tehrani, andDiana Agrest. Former faculty members include the architectsMichael Webb,Peter Eisenman,Raimund Abraham,Lebbeus Woods,Diane Lewis andJohn Hejduk.
The post-professional degree program in architecture was launched in 2009.[102] Concentrations in one or a combination of three areas are offered: theory, history and criticism of architecture, urban studies and technologies.[103]
Cooper Union has developed an athletic program[104] which fields teams in basketball, volleyball, and soccer.[105]
Awards received by Cooper Union alumni include aNobel Prize in Physics, aPritzker Prize, 3 National Medal of Arts Awards, 15Rome Prizes, 26Guggenheim Fellowships, 3MacArthur Fellowships, 9Chrysler Design Awards, 3 Emmy Awards, a Tony, a Grammy, aQueen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, and 3Thomas Jefferson Awards for Public Architecture. The institution has also had 40Fulbright Scholars since 2001 and 13National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships since 2004.[7]
Notable faculty of the Cooper Union include:
 | This articlemay containirrelevant references topopular culture. Please helpimprove it by removing such content and addingcitations toreliable,independent sources.(July 2023) |
Film
Literature
Television
It might be claiming too much to say that the Democratic Party as such gives a sufficient guarantee for the improvement of political methods or avoidance of these wrongdoings.
Give the Government the ownership of mines and railroads and like enterprises, and I tremble to think of the danger to the Republic.
I have not said one thing of him which I did not deem it necessary to say because of the vital interests of this Republic.
There can be no greater misfortune for a free nation than to find itself under incapable leadership when confronted by a great crisis.
One of the valuable lessons of my life was due to the fact that at a comparatively early age in my experience as a public speaker I had the privilege of speaking in Cooper Union in New York.
The Constitution was not made to fit us like a straitjacket.
Cooper Union Packed; Enthusiastic Throng Cheers the President for Five Minutes
But when we got near the building I saw that all the streets were blocked with people, and that traffic had stopped. I couldn't believe that these people were trying to get into Cooper Institute; but they were, and when I got to the stage at last the house was jammed full-packed; there wasn't room enough left for a child. I was happy and I was excited beyond expression. I poured the Sandwich Islands out on those people, and they laughed and shouted to my entire content. For an hour and fifteen minutes I was in paradise.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Geographic | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
40°43′45″N73°59′26″W / 40.72927°N 73.99058°W /40.72927; -73.99058
