The Cooper Union introduces Voices from the Great Hall, an extraordinary new public resource that tells the history of New York and the nation through the words of the people who helped to shape it from the stage of the storied Great Hall. Voices from the Great Hall is a digital archive, free and accessible to anyone, and generously supported by The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. This growing collection presents all known sound and video recordings made in Cooper Union’s historic Great Hall dating back to 1941 and continuing to the present, as well as 8,900 objects, such as photographs, tickets, and fliers, related to more than 3,000 Great Hall programs dating to 1859.

“Our Great Hall, once the largest gathering place in New York City, has been an important destination where people from all walks of life have organized and presented their views on the pressing matters of their time, a legacy that continues today,” says Laura Sparks, President, The Cooper Union. “We are so grateful for the Gardiner Foundation’s leadership and commitment to preserving essential New York history. Their support has made this digital Great Hall archive possible. There is so much that we, as an engaged citizenry, can draw on and learn from these historical perspectives, and that is precisely our hope for the Voices from the Great Hall archive—that it will serve as a resource for shaping the future of our shared civic and cultural life.” 

You can read more in an announcement in The Cooper Union web site at: https://bit.ly/3axCx7r.