Читать книгу John E. Parsons - Paul DeForest Hicks - Страница 10

When Parsons died in 1915, his obituary in the New York Times noted: “It is said that it was Mr. Parsons’s custom to give from one-quarter to one half of his income each year to charity.” Over his long life Parsons contributed generously to numerous charitable and civic organizations, but he supported them as much through his legal and leadership talents as with his substantial wealth.

He followed the example of his civic-minded and philanthropic grandfather, Ebenezer Clark, who was a pillar of the Presbyterian Church and the community of Rye. No one influenced Parsons more in his adult life, however, than Peter Cooper, who used his financial success as an inventor and manufacturer to become one of the most prominent philanthropists and civic leaders in nineteenth-century New York City.

Andrew Carnegie could have been speaking for both Parsons and himself when he said of Peter Cooper at a dinner in 1909 (at which Parsons presided): “He was my great exemplar, one in whose footsteps I humbly try to tread. For he was a believer in the idea that wealth is a sacred trust, the surplus to be distributed during one’s lifetime for the benefit of our fellow-men … and he thought, as I have thought, that in encouraging and aiding education, wealth can be employed to great good.”

View of Cooper Union, circa 1861 (courtesy of New York Public Library)

Cooper was the epitome of an entrepreneur, combining a talent for invention with managerial abilities that made him successful in various business and real estate ventures during his long life (1791– 1883). He turned the mundane manufacture of glue into a highly profitable enterprise and multiplied his earnings by investing in iron mines, foundries and rolling mills. Of all his business successes, perhaps the best-known were his design of the first American-built steam locomotive, called the “Tom Thumb” (because of its small size) and the completion of the first transatlantic telegraph cable in which he was a major investor.

He is best remembered, however, for founding the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art as a tuition-free institution of higher learning. From the outset, it enrolled both male and female students from the working classes without regard to race or religious affiliation. He had conceived the idea thirty years earlier while serving as a New York City Alderman and began to develop the plan for it, inspired by the success of a polytechnic school in Paris.

The cornerstone of Cooper Union was laid in 1853 by Peter Cooper and Mayor William Havemeyer, but it took another six years and nearly $700,000 to complete the original building, in addition to the land acquisition costs. There were many obstacles to overcome, including the Panic of 1857, which caused construction delays and required Cooper to sell some securities to provide additional funds. To assure that his plan started on a sound legal basis Cooper turned to his young lawyer, John E. Parsons, who was under thirty years old when Cooper became his client.

Parsons had impressed Cooper with the handling of a lawsuit against heirs of Peter Stuyvesant in which the Court of Appeals ruled that New York City could create a public square on Stuyvesant property near Cooper Union. That case called for knowledge of New York real property law, but his next project for Cooper required expertise in the laws governing corporations, nonprofit organizations, taxation and trusts.