We see students gather here all year long, playing double-dutch and doing ollies on skateboards in fall and spring, huddled over hot beverages and conversation in winter. This nebulously defined area between the Foundation Building and Cooper Triangle Park is the closest thing Cooper Union has to a college quad. Was it always this way? And if not, how did it come to be?
These were the questions that launched our investigation of the area we've been calling - for lack of a better name, and in honor of our city's stoop-hang culture - Coop's Stoop:
19th Century
The Randel Map (1818-1820) illustrates properties of pre-grid Manhattan along with the future location of the new streets and avenues. On this map, our familiar triangle is marked as owned by Nicholas William Stuyvesant. According to the Parks Department, the southern part of the triangle was deeded to the City and subsequently named Stuyvesant Square in 1850. Construction on the Cooper Union Foundation Building at the north end of the triangle began in 1853.
In the 1870s, the southern end of the triangle was planted and renamed Fourth Avenue Park. This would change again before too long, when the city renamed it in honor of Peter Cooper after his death in 1883. The statue of him that currently anchors the park wouldn't exist until 1897. (Funds to build it were raised by popular subscription, meaning that the people of New York City collectively donated $39,000 for a statue of Peter Cooper).
Throughout this century, and well into the next, the area between the Foundation Building and the park was a street (the westernmost end of 7th Street) and a busy one at that. This image from 1861 gives a sense of the traffic of all sorts that filled this neighborhood, which was so heavy that The Cooper Union was obliged to pay $3 a week for "street sprinkling" - a service where someone would come by on a regular basis and sprinkle water on the streets to keep the dust down.
Reasons for traffic varied over the years. Besides Cooper, with its public library and frequent events in its Great Hall, there were stores and markets, including - on the land that's now 41 Cooper - the 3rd Avenue Armory and Tompkins Market, which was soldier barracks upstairs and meat stalls below. In the 1870s the El Train went up on 3rd Avenue, as did increasingly more pawnshops, brothels, and saloons down the Bowery.
20th Century
Cooper Triangle (aka Peter Cooper Park) changed plenty during the first half of the 20th century - iron fences and walkways were added in the first decade of the century, and a major reconstruction in 1938 removed the underground toilets.
The street between park and college remained. But students seemed to be engaging with street more than they once did. One 1950s engineering alum recalls the park-side curb, facing Foundation, as the primary place on campus where students from art, architecture, and engineering would socialize all together. This habit shows up in images from The Pioneer and The Cable, such as this one from 1959.
So things went on until the 1970s, when 1950 Architecture alum and faculty member John Hejduk embarked on a major renovation of the Foundation Building, which required digging below the Foundation Building sub-basement below this small stretch of 7th Street, as shown in this 1973 photo.
The renovation was remarkable for its commitment to preserving the original envelope of the building, so that the facade still looks essentially the same as it did at the end of the 19th century. But one thing about the view of the building changed: "the closing of the Fourth Avenue at the West edge of the Foundation Building...conducive to the creation of a Cooper Union campus."
The result was the elimination of the active roadway, and the creation of a plaza-like area between Cooper Triangle and Foundation Building. It was no longer a through street, but there was still some traffic, as vehicles could pull up from Third Avenue to make deliveries or park.
21st Century
A redesign of Astor Place and Cooper Square in the mid-2010s created the Coop Stoop that we know today, with the 3rd Avenue street entrance blocked by circular bike racks, the addition of openings between the plaza-like area and the park, and the creation of a long bench parallel to the north end of Peter Cooper Park.
Officially, the area is still an odd one. The land still sits under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation, which classes it as a "pathway" - not quite a plaza, not quite a road. If anyone wants to erect public art in the area, they have to apply for a DOT permit.
However the area is known on paper, in practice it's very much a Cooper zone, as this 2023 photo courtesy of Kathryn Gamble illustrates: still a space where students from all disciplines gather together.
Interested in learning more? Search the Records of Cooper Union buildings and properties. If you'd like to view particular materials in person, please reach out to us at archives@cooper.edu.
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