After a meeting in Mather House in 1889 between Eugene Blackford, the fish commissioner who sat on the board of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, Franklin Hooper, Adelphi zoology professor, and John D. Jones, one of Cold Spring Harbor's largest landowners, a plan was devised for the Brooklyn Institute to set up a seaside biological laboratory on Long Island. The meeting attendants were among the first members of the Biological Laboratory Board of Managers, as listed in the 1889-1890 Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences Annual Report.