Colonel Gordon Cooper celebrity print 1975

Summary

This concrete handprint was formerly located as a part of the iconic McEwans celebrity pavement. Between 1972 and 1994, scores of celebrities had their handprints and footprints immortalised in cement at the entrance to the McEwans hardware store on Bourke Street. The City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection acquired a number of these impressed concrete slabs from the original celebrity pavement in 2005.

"Gordon Cooper (1927-2004) was selected in 1959 for the first batch of astronauts in the US space program. During a Project Mercury solo spaceflight in 1963 he became the first American to sleep in space. He was command pilot of Gemini 5 in 1965, which set a new space endurance record (just under eight days), demonstrating that astronauts could survive long enough in space to travel to the Moon and back. Despite being selected as backup commander of the Apollo 10 mission in 1969, Cooper’s career as an astronaut stalled. He retired, with the rank of Colonel, in 1970. After leaving NASA, Cooper lent his technical expertise to numerous companies and innovations, including a security lock which toured Australia to promote in 1975." - Robyn Annear, 2023