Stephen Rex Brown

Sylvan Solloway Man on a monument.

A couple of hours after our initial report from Cooper Triangle, where Cooper Union students were getting ready to join a 4 p.m. protest in Union Square, we spotted the Peter Cooper monument being wrapped in red fabric. How’d they get that top corner?, you ask. Well, one student actually climbed to the very top of the granite canopy, 25 feet above the ground – a feat possibly more impressive than mounting George Washington’s horse. The red tape (a commentary on school bureaucracy?) is already gone.

The monument, carved by former Cooper Union student Augustus Saint-Gaudens and featuring columns designed by Stanford White, turns 115 on May 29.

Update | 5:44 p.m. An “epic scene” (according to one bystander) is playing out at the statue right now, as police and firefighters try to convince the protestor to get down from the top of the statue. Check here for further updates.