Director, Cooper Union
Centurion, 1914–1936
Born 30 June 1865 in Roxbury, Massachusetts
Died 21 February 1936 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Buried Forest Hills Cemetery and Crematory
, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts
Proposed by James Harvey Robinson and George A. Plimpton
Elected 7 March 1914 at age forty-eight
Century Memorial
Charles Russell Richards’ fine presence and dignified bearing, combined with his wealth of knowledge on industry and art, made possible a notable career as educator. Professor Richards was long director of Cooper Union, instructor on science and technology at Pratt Institute, a founder of the New York Museum of Science and Industry. He had conducted special investigations in the field of industrial science and had represented this country at foreign exhibitions. Artistic study was with him a kindred specialty; Chinese art especially interested him. It was always his hobby that the effort to present in books “the processes of production that underlie the civilization of today” was futile; that those processes must be presented visibly to the eye of inquiring students, not “hidden behind factory walls.”
Alexander Dana Noyes
1937 Century Association Yearbook
