Peter Cooper (1791-1883), founder and builder of Cooper Union, is a man who fulfilled the American dream. Born in New York, he had virtually no opportunity for formal schooling because the family business was making hats and he was set to work, when he was old enough, to pick the fur from rabbit skins. Variously he was a brewer, an apprentice to a coach maker, and later, a cabinet maker, before opening a grocery store on the site of today's Cooper Union.

As the grocery business prospered, he started a woolen factory, then a glue factory and an iron works, which became the basis for his large fortune. An inventor and manufacturer, he designed and built the first American locomotive and his factory produced the first structural beams for buildings.

The child of a family of artisans of Dutch descent, he decided to respond to his own lack of education by founding The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, offering free education to men and women alike, regardless of religious or political belief.

A member, with his family, of All Souls, he worked closely with Henry Whitney Bellows on the Sanitary Commission and educational reform, and Cooper's prestige and great popularity among citizens of the city enhanced any cause he chose to support.

The family lived quietly and without ostentation on Gramercy Park, close to the site of our third church building. Cooper Union was a unique gift to the people of New York, and although Cooper was active and supportive of many causes, it is this educational institution that is most closely associated with his name and life.