Mr. Cooper made many inventions in connection with this business. He became associated with Cyrus W. Field in his efforts to lay the Atlantic Cable, and the final success of that enterprise was in great measure due to his coöperation. Mr. Cooper is perhaps best known as the founder of the Cooper Institute, of which he commenced the construction as early as 1853. The objects of this institution were to furnish free schools in art and science and a free reading room and to provide free lectures on scientific, artistic, and social subjects. Mr. Cooper died, universally respected, in 1883.
Abram S. Hewitt, a native of Rockland County, N. Y., was the son-in-law of Peter Cooper, and to him, in partnership with his son Edward Cooper, he transferred that branch of his business connected with the manufacture of iron. Mr. Hewitt was a man much interested in the great social problems, being no mere theorist but a man ready to sacrifice his own interests to the well being of his dependents.
It is a fact that for forty years the business at Trenton was carried on with absolutely no profit beyond the amount necessary to pay the wages of the three thousand men employed and the regular expenses of the establishment. He stated at one of the meetings of the Congressional Committee on the grievances of labor that from 1873 to 1879 the business was carried on at a loss of one hundred thousand dollars a year. Of course, one object was to continue the business and to prevent the deterioration of the plant, but the firm also aimed to avoid throwing such a large body of men out of employment, although at times they were placed on half pay.
Notwithstanding, the firm became wealthy through ventures not relating to the iron business and also through investments connected with it. As an example it may be mentioned that a large purchase of iron in 1879–80 resulted in a profit of a million dollars. In 1874 Mr. Hewitt was elected a representative to Congress and served with the exception of one term until 1886. In that year he was chosen mayor of New York. Mr. Hewitt was extremely honest and independent. He was neither a free trader nor a protectionist. He was a reformer but not a radical one, and at his death the nation, and especially the Democratic Party, lost a wise statesman and counselor.[28]
The General Theological Seminary
Chelsea
Some time about the year 1750 Captain Clarke, a veteran of the provincial army, who had seen considerable service in the French war, built a country house, two or three miles north of the city, to which he gave the name of Chelsea. He gave it this name because he said it was to be the retreat of an old soldier in the evening of his days.
It has been thought that the name of Greenwich was given to the neighboring estate by Admiral Warren for a corresponding sentimental reason, but Mr. Janvier, in that very entertaining book, “In Old New York,” shows that the name of Greenwich was in use long before the admiral’s advent. Captain Clarke, unfortunately, was not destined long to enjoy the house he had built. During his last illness, the house caught fire and the captain came very near being burned with it, but he was carried out by neighbors and shortly after died in an adjacent farmhouse. Mrs. Clarke rebuilt the house on the crest of a hill that sloped down to the river about three hundred feet distant.[29] The estate descended to her daughter, the wife of Bishop Moore, and in 1813 it was conveyed to their son, Clement C. Moore,[30] by whom the old house was considerably enlarged. The house was taken down when the bulkhead along the river front was constructed by the city. Mr. Moore gave the whole of the block bounded by Twentieth and Twenty-first streets and Ninth and Tenth avenues to the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, and it became known as Chelsea Square. The building here shown was built about 1835 and is constructed of a gray stone. The modern buildings, however, are of brick and stone, of a Gothic style and, with the old trees remaining and the stretches of green lawn, produce, especially in summer time, a suggestion of English seclusion and repose quite at variance with the bustle and the crudeness of that part of the city.