Walking up the Bowery Road--then the stage route to Boston, but now a crowded down-town street--he selected in the suburbs of the city the site for his great institution; and, as he accumulated the necessary funds, he bought at intervals lot after lot at the intersection of Third and Fourth Avenues, until he had acquired the entire block, paying for his latest purchases (made after the neighborhood had been solidly built up and had become a centre of business) very high prices compared with those he had paid at the beginning. At last (in 1854) he commenced the erection of a six-story fire-proof building of stone, brick, and iron. This work occupied several years, and during its progress a period of great financial distress threatened to interrupt it. But he persisted in the undertaking, at great risk to his private business; and the building was finished at a cost (including that of the land) of more than six hundred and thirty thousand dollars. Subsequent gifts from Mr. Cooper, together with the legacy provided by his will, and doubled by his heirs, and still later donations from his family and immediate relatives, make up a total of more than double that amount.[7] Up to the time when the building was completed Mr. Cooper had taken little advice as to the details of his project. Its outlines in his mind were those which he had conceived a quarter-century before, and though he was doubtless conscious that new social and industrial conditions had intervened which would require some modifications of his plan, he had not formulated such changes. The classes which he wished especially to reach were those who, being already engaged in earning a living by labor, could scarcely be expected to take regular courses in instruction; and the idea of such instruction appears to have been at the beginning subordinate in his mind. He had a strong impression that young mechanics and apprentices, instead of wasting their time in dissipation, should improve their minds during the intervals of labor; and not unnaturally his first thought as to the means of such improvement turned to those things which had aroused and stimulated his own mind. Probably he did not realize that the mass of men were not like himself, and that something more than mere suggestion or opportunity would be required to develop the mental powers and enlarge the knowledge of the average workingman. However that may be, the original vague design of Mr. Cooper was something like this:--