Welcome to The Cooper Union

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Foundation Building

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Welcome to Cooper! The Cooper Union was founded in 1859 by inventor, industrialist, and social reformer Peter Cooper. A top-ranked college offering degrees in architecture, art, and engineering, Cooper Union awards every admitted undergraduate student a half-tuition scholarship. From the beginning, Cooper's Foundation Building—now a New York City landmark—was a meeting place for intellectuals, activists, and people from every social strata. It boasted innovative features for its time, including a cylindrical shaft between floors that anticipated the invention of the elevator. On the ground floor is The Cooper Union Library, part of a consortium with NYU and The New School giving students expanded library access and privileges.

Great Hall

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The Great Hall has been a pillar of activism and civic engagement in NYC since its opening in 1858, a year before the institution. It was the platform for early workers' rights campaigns and for the birth of the NAACP, the women's suffrage movement, and the American Red Cross. The Great Hall stage has hosted countless famous Americans—rebels, reformers, poets, and intellectuals. Since Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous "Right Makes Might" address, a total of ten U.S. Presidents have spoken here, including Barack Obama on two occasions. The Great Hall continues this legacy today, hosting lectures, concerts, and debates that are free and open to the public.

3rd Floor Architecture Studio

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Students in the School of Architecture are provided individual workspaces with a full-size table for drawing, drafting, and laptop computing, as well as individual or shared worktables for reference and model building. The first- through fourth-years share a single 8,000 square foot open studio; the fifth-year thesis class and Master of Science in Architecture students share smaller studio spaces adjacent to the open studio. This open environment allows for interaction between students, classes, and faculty. On the 2nd floor is the Architecture Archive, which records the school's pedagogy through student work and produces exhibitions and publications on the subject of architecture and related disciplines.

4th Floor Shop and AACE Lab

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The Fourth Floor Shop is an integral part of the Cooper experience, offering access to tools for creating projects in wood, metal, plastics, plaster, and clay, as well as welding equipment and a bronze casting foundry. A professional technical staff is available for creative consultation on projects across all design disciplines. The IDC Foundation Art, Architecture, Construction, and Engineering (AACE) Lab is a multidisciplinary makerspace supporting all of Cooper's schools with advanced fabrication equipment. The facility enables students to fabricate intricate components, artwork, prototypes, and models from a range of materials and digital tools, including laser cutters, CNC routers, 3D printers, a waterjet cutting machine, and more.

5th Floor Print and Type Shop

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The 5th floor houses the most technical facilities in the School of Art, dedicated to the disciplines of printmaking, photography, film, and video. The technicians who staff these facilities are the backbone of the School of Art program. They assist and support students as they work in these various spaces. All of them are artists; some are alumni or adjuncts who teach in the undergraduate program. The printmaking department offers classes in lithography, etching, silkscreen, relief, and papermaking. There is also a computer lab and technical facilities dedicated to processing and printing with silkscreens. Other resources on the 5th floor include the photo, film, video, animation, and sound labs.

Paint Studios

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Students do not declare majors in the School of Art. In fact, they are not allowed to take more than two classes per semester in the same discipline, and each floor is dedicated to different concentrations. The 6th floor studios are mostly devoted to painting and are occupied primarily by juniors and seniors. Students are given studio space starting in their sophomore year. However, most classrooms in the school have a multipurpose function and host a variety of drawing and painting classes. Live modeling sessions are offered throughout the semester for students of all years and majors. Painting studios are also located on the 9th floor of 41 Cooper Square.

41 Cooper Square

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41 Cooper Square, designed by architect Thom Mayne, is home to the Albert Nerken School of Engineering, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Louis and Jeannette Brooks Computer Center, the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography, the Saturday Program, 41 Cooper Gallery, the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, and the Benjamin Menschel Civic Projects Lab. It also features state-of-the-art-laboratories, classrooms, studios, and lounges as well as the Hub, an information center where visitors and students can meet by appointment with members of the Office of Enrollment, including admissions counselors, financial aid advisors, and the registrar.

Engineering Labs

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The labs are specialized according to major and are spaces where students collaborate, explore, and create. The Chemistry labs include the General Chemistry and the Organic Chemistry Labs for upper and lower classmen. The Chemical Engineering labs include the IA Lab and the Unit Ops Lab. The Civil Engineering labs include the Materials and Structures Lab and the Hydraulics Lab. The Electrical Engineering labs include the Integrated Circuits Engineering Lab and the microLab. The Mechanical Engineering labs include the Makerspace Lab, the Vibrations and Acoustic Lab, and the Automotive and Experimentation Lab. The Computer Science labs include the Brooks Computer Center, the Electrical Engineering labs, and the Makerspace Lab. There are also Interdisciplinary labs for work in tissue engineering, intelligent systems, and the multidisciplinary Art, Architecture, Construction, and Engineering (AACE) Lab.

Residence Hall

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The Student Residence Hall offers apartment-style housing for approximately 170 students in a typical year. Units range in size to accommodate three to five people, with most of the apartments being composed of two bedrooms, shared by four people. Each unit includes a bathroom, kitchen, and bedrooms. The building amenities include a laundry room, a Student Reading Room, Student Study Room, the Benjamin Menschel common room, the Office of Student Affairs, and the Center for Career Development. The Residence Hall is staffed 24/7 by eight upper-class resident assistants as well as professional on-call staff. First-year students are given priority, while most upperclassmen live off campus.

Peter Cooper Statue

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For more than a century, this statue of Peter Cooper (1791–1883) has watched over the park and school that bear his name. Following Cooper's death, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the preeminent 19th century sculptor and one of the earliest alumni of Cooper Union (Class of 1864), was commissioned to design a monument in Cooper's honor with the renowned architect Stanford White creating the piece's marble and granite canopy. The statue is located in Cooper Square in front of the Foundation Building. Every year in February for Peter Cooper's birthday, the statue is adorned with flowers to celebrate his contribution to society and his vision of education for all.

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