It occupies an entire block, and is the gift of Peter Cooper,
Esq., to the public. It contains lecture rooms, rooms for experiments,
free schools of science and art for the working classes, a reading
room, and a library. The street floor and that, above are rented out
for stores and offices, and yield an annual income of from twenty-five
to thirty thousand dollars.
THE BIBLE HOUSE,
Faces the Cooper Institute, and occupies a whole block, being bounded
by Third and Fourth Avenues, and Eighth and Ninth streets. It is an
immense structure, nearly triangular in form. It is the property of the
American Bible Society, and was erected at a cost of three hundred
thousand dollars. The revenue of the society is about five millions of
dollars annually. Thousands of copies of the Bible are printed here
annually, and sold or distributed in all parts of the world. The Bible
has been printed here in twenty-four different dialects, and parts of
it have been issued in others still.
[Illustration: Cooper Institute.]
About six hundred persons find employment in this gigantic
establishment. Of these about three hundred are girls, and twenty or
thirty boys. The girls feed the presses, sew the books, apply gold-leaf
to the covers ready for tooling, etc. About a dozen little girls are
employed in the press-room in laying the sheets, of the best description
of Bibles, between glazed boards, and so preparing them for
being placed in the hydraulic presses.
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