Former Residence of the Late Peter Cooper and the Late Abram S. Hewitt
Peter Cooper was born in New York in 1791. His father being a man of small means, he was at an early age put into business and contributed to the support of his family.
He entered into the manufacture of glue and soon became the best-known maker of that commodity. In 1828, when thirty-seven years of age, he had acquired considerable wealth and was enabled to buy three thousand acres of land within the limits of the city of Baltimore. Here he built the great Canton Iron Works, and the entire investment soon proved extremely successful. About the year 1830 he built, at the West Point Foundry, N. Y., the first locomotive constructed in the United States for actual service. Not long after he disposed of the Canton Iron Works and erected enormous iron works at the city of Trenton, N. J. The firm was a pioneer in the successful manufacture of iron and became one of the largest of the kind in the country.
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