- Cooper Square
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Coordinates: 40°43′43″N 73°59′26″W / 40.72861°N 73.99056°W
A map of Cooper Square (in red), showing some locations of interest in the area:
1. Cooper Union Foundation Building
2. McSorley's Old Ale House
3. Cooper Union New Academic Building
4. Cooper Square Hotel
5. Village Voice
6. Public Theatre (Astor Library)
7. Colonnade Row / Astor Place Theatre (Blue Man Group)
8. Clinton Hall (site of the Astor Opera House)
9. KMart (Wanamaker Department Store Annex)
10. Hamilton Fish HouseCooper Square is a junction of streets in lower Manhattan, New York City located at the confluence of the neighborhoods of The Bowery to the south, NoHo to the west and southwest, Greenwich Village to the west and northwest, the East Village to the north and east, and the Lower East Side to the southeast.
Cooper Square looking uptown in 1957...
...and in 2008Beginning at its southern end when The Bowery crosses East 4th Street, the road then splits in two, both with Cooper Square addresses, until they cross Astor Place between East 8th Street and St. Marks Place and become Fourth Avenue (the western street) and Third Avenue (the eastern street).[1] Because The Bowery, Third Avenue and both sides of Cooper Square are two-way streets, the intersection is complex, and difficult for pedestrians to navigate, especially considering that it is part of a city-approved through-truck route.[2] The New York City Department of Transportation has announced plans to "normalize" traffic, increase the size of the park in the middle of the square, and create a new community park in the area.[3]
Cooper Square is named after Peter Cooper, the 19th Century industrialist and philanthropist who, early in his life, ran a grocery store nearby.[4] In 1853, Cooper broke ground for Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, an institution founded on the belief that high-quality education should be "free as air and water" and available to all who qualified, including women – a radical notion at the time – without cost. It continues to provide every student with a full-tuition scholarship. Frederick A. Peterson's Cooper Union Foundation Building on the north end of the square, the oldest existing American building framed with steel beams,[5] still stands where it was located when it opened in 1859, but the interior was extensively reconstructed in 1975 not only to modernize it, but also to fulfill one of Cooper's plans which was never realized at the time: the installation of a round elevator. The exterior of the building was restored in 1999 as well.[6]
Downtown of the Foundation Building is a small park, Cooper Triangle, which includes a monument dedicated to Peter Cooper. Across the street, at 41 Cooper Square, is the school's newest building, the New Academic Building, designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis.
The Village Voice's headquarters are on the western side of the square, as are classroom buildings of New York University and Kaplan, Inc. The sleek, modern high-rise Cooper Square Hotel at #25 is one of the newest buildings on the square.
Gallery
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The Cooper Union's Foundation Building has anchored the north end of the square since 1859
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The monument to Peter Cooper sits between the Foundation Building and the park at Cooper Triangle
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#61: This building was built in 1867 as a bank, but has been a church since 1937. (New York City Landmark, 1969[7])
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#41: Cooper Union's New Academic Building, designed by Thom Mayne, opened in Summer 2009
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#35: The modest building on the left was owned in the early 19th century by a great-grandson of Peter Stuyvesant.[8] It has recently been demolished for new construction.
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#25: The luxury Cooper Square Hotel, an ultra-modern 21-story tower, opened in 2008
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#36: Houses the headquarters of the alternative weekly Village Voice as well as the headquarters for several cutting-edge digital firms including foursquare, curbed.com and the digital agency 9Threads.
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#72: Although it has a Lafayette Street address (#445), this condominium building, designed by Charles Gwathmey and completed in 2004, also sits on Cooper Square at what would be #72.
See also
- Astor Place
References
- Notes
- ^ Six blocks later, Fourth Avenue becomes Park Avenue South, which later becomes Park Avenue at 33rd Street.
- ^ "NYC Through Truck Routes" on the NYC Department of Transportation website (June 2010)
- ^ Pedestrians and Sidewalks: East Village, Astor Place - Cooper Square" NYC Department of Transportation website
- ^ Moscow, Henry The Street Book: An Encyclopedia of Manhattan's Street Names and Their Origins New York: Hagstrom 1978. ISBN 0823212750
- ^ Actally, steel railroad tracks used as beams. White, Norval & Willensky, Elliot (2000). AIA Guide to New York City (4th ed.). New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0812931076.
- ^ White, Norval & Willensky, Elliot (2000). AIA Guide to New York City (4th ed.). New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0812931076.
- ^ New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Guide to New York City Landmarks (4th ed.) New York:Wiley, 2009. ISBN 978-0-470-28963-1, p.65
- ^ Vanishing NY
External links
Categories:- Squares in New York City
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