Peter Cooper

(from an interview with Peter Buckley, Dean of Humanities, The Cooper Union)

Cooper was the first great 19th Century industrial philanthropist. There were other people who had given their wealth like Peabody, the Lowell's in Boston, but they already came from wealth, they hadn't gone up the social ladder, they hadn't conformed to some kind of rags to riches social myth, so their act was a matter of charity. Cooper thought that his act was a matter of justice.


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There were many other industrialists such as Matthew Vasser who gave their money away, but there were many who didn't and many who decided to buy expensive mansions and to display their wealth in all kinds of wonderful new ways. Cooper remained a kind of simple republican he believed that people should present a non luxurious face to the world and the money they earned beyond any of their wants should be given back. He then becomes Cooper's beneficence with Cooper Union becomes a model for many other kind of philanthropy Andrew Carnegie quite clearly has said that Cooper had taught him the gospel of wealth and that his later magnificent gifts were based on Cooper's model.


Andrew Carnegie

The most important things about peter cooper's career and life is that he traveled really from the 18th Century, deep into the 19th century and in the process he managed to touch so many of the social developments that that age brought . He started as an artisan and worked his way up to being one of America’s most foremost industrialists in fact one of America’s wealthiest people but in his own heart I think he always thought of himself as a rather simple 18th century man.

Cooper was very fortunate in hitting New York City at the right time. He rode the wave of the first industrial revolution, never missed a beat. He managed to get into glue at the right time and steel at the right time. There's not one aspect that he didn't seem to manage to make some money out of all the way up to the civil war. And he counted this as having a very lucky life, that he almost had some kind of angel looking over his shoulder because he was always in the right place at the right time when so many of his friends actually didn't do particularly well through those years.

Cooper always thought of himself as one of the people, a member of the working class. He would come to McSorley’s round the corner from Cooper Union, in fact it opened before Cooper Union, and chat and exchange views and intelligence about the trades. He always thought that everyone should have a chance in life and that it wouldn't take much to move people form a position of dependence to a position of independence. Which I think for any 19th century indeed 18th century artisan was the basic path you had to get out from under other people.

When Cooper died in 1883 the whole city went into mourning for several days and there was an official funeral cortège that left his church at All Souls and came down Broadway and estimates are that the crowd was over 100,000 people following the cortège and lining the streets, so it really was a moment of great sadness. And all of the newspapers reflected on what a remarkable life had been led.


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