As a struggling young apprentice, Peter Cooper regarded with intense sympathy the needs and limitations of the class to which he belonged. But his notion of a remedy was not that of paternal legislation, or belligerent organization, or social reconstruction. To his conception the atmosphere of personal liberty and responsibility furnished by the new democratic republic, offering free scope to individual endeavor and rewarding individual merit, was the best that could be asked.
What he dreamed of doing was simply to assist these social conditions by providing for those who were handicapped by circumstances the means of power and opportunity, to be utilized by their own assiduity. This plan included not only what he then thought to be the most effective system for intellectual improvement, but also provision for such innocent entertainment as would supersede the grosser forms of recreation, which involved the waste of money and health.
Walking up the Bowery Road—then the stage route to Boston, but now a crowded down-town street—he selected in the suburbs of the city the site for his great institution; and, as he accumulated the necessary funds, he bought at intervals lot after lot at the intersection of Third and Fourth Avenues, until he had acquired the entire block, paying for his latest purchases (made after the neighborhood had been solidly built up and had become a centre of business) very high prices compared with those he had paid at the beginning. At last (in 1854) he commenced the erection of a six-story fire-proof building of stone, brick, and iron. This work occupied several years, and during its progress a period of great financial distress threatened to interrupt it. But he persisted in the undertaking, at great risk to his private business; and the building was finished at a cost (including that of the land) of more than six hundred and thirty thousand dollars. Subsequent gifts from Mr. Cooper, together with the legacy provided by his will, and doubled by his heirs, and still later donations from his family and immediate relatives, make up a total of more than double that amount.[7]
Up to the time when the building was completed Mr. Cooper had taken little advice as to the details of his project. Its outlines in his mind were those which he had conceived a quarter-century before, and though he was doubtless conscious that new social and industrial conditions had intervened which would require some modifications of his plan, he had not formulated such changes.
The classes which he wished especially to reach were those who, being already engaged in earning a living by labor, could scarcely be expected to take regular courses in instruction; and the idea of such instruction appears to have been at the beginning subordinate in his mind. He had a strong impression that young mechanics and apprentices, instead of wasting their time in dissipation, should improve their minds during the intervals of labor; and not unnaturally his first thought as to the means of such improvement turned to those things which had aroused and stimulated his own mind. Probably he did not realize that the mass of men were not like himself, and that something more than mere suggestion or opportunity would be required to develop the mental powers and enlarge the knowledge of the average workingman. However that may be, the original vague design of Mr. Cooper was something like this:—
There was in the city of New York a famous collection of curiosities known as Scudder's Museum. Barnum's Museum afterwards took its place; but that, too, has long since disappeared; and the small so-called museums now scattered through the city but faintly remind old inhabitants of the glories of Scudder's or Barnum's in their prime. These establishments contained all sorts of curiosities, arranged without much reference to scientific use,—wax-works, historical relics, dwarfs, giants, living and stuffed animals, etc. There was also a lecture-room, devoted principally to moral melodrama; and on an upper floor a large room was occupied by the cosmorama,—an exhibition of pictures, usually of noteworthy scenery, foreign cities, etc., which were looked at through round holes, enhancing the effect of their illumination.
Peter Cooper doubtless often lingered in these museums, receiving the inspiration which came from visions of a world much wider than his individual horizon, from the curious and wonderful works of nature, and from the works of man in former times and in foreign lands. From the queer mechanical devices exhibited by inventors to the "Happy Family" and the cosmorama, everything was full to his quick sympathy of intellectual, moral, or sentimental suggestion; and no doubt he felt, after an hour of such combined wonder and reflection, a satisfying sense of time well spent.
He wished that this means of mental improvement and recreation combined might be freely afforded to those whose scanty earnings would not permit them otherwise to make frequent use of it, and he resolved that the museum and the cosmorama should be included in his institution.
Another agency of which Mr. Cooper had made fruitful use, and the efficacy of which he highly appreciated, was conversation and debate. If people could be brought together and made to talk he thought they would learn a great deal from each other. In this he had undoubtedly grasped one of the great principles of progress. To meet and interchange our ideas of books and by personal discussions is indeed the mightiest factor of modern improvement. But the mere meeting to talk about things unless it is combined with the disposition and the apparatus for studying things is but barter without production, and may degenerate to a barren exchange of words, as unprofitable as that described in the Yankee proverb, "swapping jackknives in a garret." This aspect of the truth Mr. Cooper doubtless came to appreciate; but at the outset, habituated as he was to get ideas from everybody he met and everything he saw, it seemed to him that free discussions would be an unmixed benefit to all, and he resolved that his institution should contain rooms, devoted to the several handicrafts, where the practitioners of each could meet and "exchange views."