Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York City
Peter Cooper was an inventor and industrialist, for a time operating a glue factory in New York near Kips Bay in Manhattan. In the late 1820s he began to invest in Maryland property, based on his faith in the new Baltimore and Ohio railroad. When iron ore was discovered on land he owned he opened the Canton Iron Company in Baltimore. It was Cooper who developed the Tom Thumb steam locomotive, which created the early success of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.
Another glue factory in Gowanda and a number of patents for his inventions added to Cooper’s fortune. Some of these patents were involved in the manufacture and packaging of gelatin, which he sold to a patent medicine manufacturer. The patented process was used to develop a product in 1897 which was called Jell-O. Despite his steadily growing wealth, Cooper lived frugally and simply in New York City, from which he managed his affairs.
In the 1850s Cooper became involved with the telegraph industry, helping form the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company, supervising the Atlantic cable project, and forming the American Telegraph Company, which quickly bought out existing smaller companies and consolidated the industry in the east. He also became involved in New York politics and was a proponent of the anti-slavery movement.
The Public School Society was a private organization in New York City which operated the city’s free schools, using money from the city. Cooper was its head in 1848 when it began offering evening classes. Cooper decided to open a school which offered free adult education in mechanics, science, and the arts to better prepare adults of both sexes for business success. In 1859 Cooper Union opened after Cooper spent $600,000 of his own money building its Great Hall.
Cooper Union until 2014 offered a full tuition scholarship to all admitted students. Since that time it has offered scholarships on a sliding scale as it studied ways to return to the financial condition which would allow it to return to full scholarships for all. It has historically been one of the most selective colleges in the United States, admitting less than ten percent of applicants. Peter Cooper endowed the Cooper Union with the majority of his wealth.