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June 30, 2009, 10:54 AM ET
Conservative Investment Policies Helped Cooper Union Afford Thom Mayne Building
Cooper Union’s new academic building, designed to achieve LEED gold certification, occupies a prominent site on Third Avenue in Manhattan. (Iwan Baan photo)
Three years ago administrators at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art decided, along with their financial advisers, to “ratchet back the financial risk” in the institution’s investments, The Wall Street Journal says in an article today that describes how the college was able to afford a striking new academic building even though it charges its students no tuition.
Although many other colleges have seen the value of their investments decrease significantly, Cooper Union’s endowment is expected to amount to about $600-million as the fiscal year ends today — just about what it was this time a year ago, the newspaper says. The institution’s prize asset is the land underneath one of New York’s most prominent Art Deco landmarks, the Chrysler Building. The property, which brings the institution $19-million a year, was a gift from the family of Peter Cooper, the 19th-century industrialist and philanthropist who founded the college.
A 1999 deal between Cooper Union and the owner of the Chrysler Building set ground rent for the property far into the future, and that guaranteed income allowed the institution to borrow cheaply to pay for the new nine-story building, designed by Morphosis, the architect Thom Mayne’s firm. The sculptural, mesh-sheathed building will house Cooper Union’s engineering school along with its humanities and social-sciences programs, in addition to providing some facilities for art and architecture programs.
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