"One of the wonderful things about Cooper's personality was that he believed nothing should go to waste. The clearest case of this was that after he had started to roll his iron rails out of the Trenton Works, he quickly saw that you could change the nature of the cross section of a rail and make it into building materials. And so the I-beam was then quickly developed by Cooper, originally for the building of the Cooper Union itself. He actually delayed the opening and building of Cooper Union so that money could be made from providing steel for Harper Brothers printing establishment. So though Cooper Union was due to open in 1856, there was a three year delay when he made money out of providing steel for another building.
The use of I-beams in the Cooper Union foundation building.
"Cooper thought that you could increase the airiness of an interior space by using iron construction in both the columns and in the ceiling joists. He didn't at that time think of a totally steel skeleton that awaited the idea of a skyscraper. But certainly the Cooper Union building as it exists presages the iron construction for the supports of a building.
The use of I-beams in the Great Hall.
"Use of the steel in the interior of Cooper Union allowed him to produce this Great Hall, which though nowadays seems actually reasonably small. It could include up to 2,000 people in a space and the steel allowed everybody in the audience a good line of sight of the stage which you couldn't have thought would have been done out of stone or masonry construction."
20th Century photo of the Great Hall.
