The Foundation Building is an Italianate brownstone structure that you can identify by its flat-topped silhouette and deep, reddish-brown masonry. Built by industrialist Peter Cooper in eighteen fifty-nine, it was the first building in New York to be supported by rolled wrought-iron I-beams. Cooper, who manufactured these beams in his own ironworks, also insisted on including a circular elevator shaft years before the actual invention of the passenger elevator.
The Cooper Union
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