The Emancipator

The more he listened to his friend's description of the Ecole Polytechnique of Paris, that day in the 1830s, the more excited became Manhattan's great Philanthropist Peter Cooper. Once a $25-a-year apprentice to a coachmaker. Cooper had risen to fame and fortune with only about a year's formal schooling behind him. But in Paris, according to his friend, there were hundreds of poor young men willing to live "on a bare crust of bread" to attend the Ecole. As the friend went on, Cooper began to think: "How glad I should have been to have found such an institution in the City of New York when I was myself an apprentice . . . I then determined to do what I could to secure to the youth of my native city and country the benefits of such an institution."

Eventually. Peter Cooper fulfilled his pledge by building a pioneering school which offered art, science and engineering to the poor. For many years his Cooper Union was one of the proudest landmarks in downtown Manhattan (Fourth Avenue and Eighth Street). But with the vast growth of the U.S. educational system, the Union's reputation became obscured: to many, it began to seem more of a historical oddity, e.g., the place where Lincoln made his famed Cooper Union address, than a going educational concern. Last week, as it launched its centennial program with the backing of scores of the country's first citizens, it had a chance to show that it is actually a highly significant part of the U.S. educational scheme.

Near Riot. When Cooper Union first opened its doors, so many students tried to get in that registration, said one observer, "almost resulted in a riot." All classes and lectures were (and are) free, and it did not matter how much schooling a student had had. Young immigrants who could get an education nowhere else flocked both day and night to the Union for courses in mechanics, music and mathematics. Young women, determined to support themselves, jammed the school of design. The Union's reading room was the city's first free public library. Its evening lectures (in 1863. there were six on government, four on political economy, ten on the American Revolution, and, for some reason, one on coral and coral islands) were for thousands of workers their first glimpse of education.

For such distinguished visitors as the future Edward VII. an inspection of Cooper Union was a must. As the years went by, everyone from Mark Twain to Woodrow Wilson to Bertrand Russell lectured there. The Union gave Inventor Michael Pupin his start in life; it trained Sculptor Saint-Gaudens. Its library was the favorite haunt of an immigrant boy named Felix Frankfurter. "It was the place." said Frankfurter later, "that first stretched my mind."

High Scores. Today, under able President Edwin Sharp Burdell, onetime dean of humanities at M.I.T., Cooper Union still stretches the minds of its 1,300 students with a far greater success than is generally known. Of the nation's best engineering schools, it ranks below only Caltech and M.I.T. in the number of students it produces who go on to get advanced degrees. It has one of the most complete museums of decorative arts in the U.S.; in the last six years its art students have won 36 Fulbright scholarships and seven Prix de Rome. Still entirely free and supported completely by private gifts, it takes its pick of 2,000 applicants a year. Its entrance requirements can therefore remain high. This year's entering class of 365 scored within the top 7% of all students who took the College Board exams; one in two ranked with the top 1%.

When Burdell took over in 1938, Cooper Union still suffered some natural overemphasis on practicality. Coming mostly from underprivileged homes, its students apparently wanted courses that would quickly lead to good jobs. Burdell insisted that all engineering students, whether studying four years by day or eight years by night, take courses in the humanities every year. He made sure that all art students, whether studying to be painters, engravers, architects or commercial illustrators, take basic courses in the history and general principles of art.

But there is also at Cooper Union a special emphasis on English and public speaking, designed to eliminate the rough edges arising out of poor and polyglot homes. In the sense that Cooper Union still provides an emancipation that for thousands might not otherwise be possible, it has changed little since the days of Peter Cooper. "When people say of Cooper Union, 'Lincoln spoke there.' " says President Burdell, "we like to add: 'He still speaks there.' "

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