St johns university, st aug. hall, zeuscgt for wiki 1

Queens is home to several colleges, but none have the national and international reputation of St. John’s University, in Jamaica. Many distinguished alumni have passed through its gates over the years, including Mario Cuomo, Ray Kelly, Charles Rangel, William Casey, the former head of the CIA, and Hugh Carey, who like Mario Cuomo, was the Governor of New York State. They top a list of distinguished political figures, banking heads, sports figures and business executives. Everyone in New York City has heard of St. John’s basketball and other sports teams, all called the Red Storm, but very few people know that the university got its start as a small college for the children of Irish and Italian immigrants in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

The College of St. John the Baptist was founded by the Vincentian Fathers in 1868. The order had been invited to open the school at the invitation of Bishop John Laughlin, the first Bishop of the Dioceses of Brooklyn. The population of Catholics in Brooklyn was growing by leaps and bounds, creating a need for higher educational opportunities for immigrant children, specifically boys, who could not afford the existing private schools and colleges. He wanted to establish a school for the poor Catholic boys of Brooklyn, where they could receive a fine education and moral training.


The school was located at 75 Lewis Avenue, in eastern Bedford Stuyvesant, at Willoughby Avenue. The first building had its cornerstone laid in 1868, and was functioning by 1870. It was part of a huge building designed by Patrick Keely, the foremost architect for the Catholic Church in his day. He designed a block wide and half a block long rectangular building with a courtyard in the center. It’s a magnificent Victorian pile of a building, with a mansard roof, gables and dormers, and tons of windows. It’s also got plenty of terra cotta trim, multicolored slate, and is made of rich red brick. It still stands, and is still quite an impressive sight.

The school was part of a larger complex anchored by the enormous and magnificent Church of St. John the Baptist, also designed by Keely, between 1888 and 1894. As the college grew, two later buildings sprang up along Lewis Avenue, creating an urban campus. At some point, the college became co-ed, admitting women. The college thrived in this location until 1925, when it added a law school, thus beginning its path to becoming not just an undergraduate college, but a university.

The Law School and other graduate level programs were established on two floors of the Terminal Building at 50 Court Street, in Downtown Brooklyn. In 1928 they relocated to a new building at 96 Schermerhorn Street, a building that’s now residential. This twelve story building held the Schools of Law, Accounting, and Commerce and Finance, as well as the Borough Hall Division of the College of Arts and Sciences. St. John’s officially became a university in 1933.

By the 1950s, the college wanted out of Brooklyn and into the suburbs. They wanted to consolidate the undergraduate and graduate programs in one location, and have a larger campus than the streets of Brooklyn could provide. Looking to the suburban communities of a growing Queens, they chose this site in Jamaica.

The present day site of St. John’s was once the Hillcrest Golf Club. The 100 acre site was purchased for $550,000 in the 1930s, and held on to until funds could be procured to build a large new campus The time was right in 1954, when ground was broken for the first classroom building, the $3 million St. John Hall. That year the University officially changed its name to St. John’s University, New York.

A year later, the building was completed and the college moved out of Bedford Stuyvesant over to its new home in Queens. It was 1955. The graduate school of Arts and Sciences followed, from Schermerhorn Street. The new building also offered classes from the School of Commerce, as well as from the School of Education. Over the following twenty years, all of the graduate schools would move from Brooklyn to Queens, with the last, the Law School, moving in 1972. For the first time in a hundred years, St. John’s College was no longer a presence in Brooklyn.

Here in Jamaica, the campus grew, as more and more buildings were constructed, including classroom buildings, recreational facilities, auditoriums and all of the other necessary buildings needed in a university setting. They soon took up the hundred acres of the old golf course.

Amazingly enough, the first dormitory was not built on campus itself until 1999. Students had always lived off campus and/or commuted from all over the city. Most of them still do. Today there are at least seven dorms, as well as off campus townhouse facilities. In the early 20th century, St. John’s underwent a decade long massive building program. During that time, new gym and athletic facilities have been built, as well as a massive new student center, St. Thomas More Church, new classroom and academic buildings, a new science center, offices and administration buildings.

Today, St. John’s has branch campuses in Manhattan, Staten Island, Oakdale (Long Island) as well as Rome and Paris. It is one of the nation’s top 100 colleges, ranking high in academic achievement, as well as for its campus life and athletics programs. There are over 20,000 students in both undergraduate and graduate classes. It’s all quite a long way from the college envisioned by Bishop Laughlin as a place where an immigrant boy could learn to succeed and thrive in America. The official address of St. John’s University is 8000 Utopia Parkway. The closest subway is the F train to 169th Street. GMAP

(Photograph:St. Augustine Hall at St. John’s University. Zeuscgt for Wikipedia)

Original St. John's College. Lewis Avenue, Bedford Stuyvesant. Photo: S.Spellen
Original St. John’s College. Lewis Avenue, Bedford Stuyvesant. Photo: S.Spellen
St. John the Baptist Church, with St. John's College in background. Bedford Stuyvesant. Date of Photo unknown.
St. John the Baptist Church, with St. John’s College in background. Bedford Stuyvesant. Date of Photo unknown.
96 Schermerhorn, Brooklyn Heights, home to St. J. Law School and graduate programs prior to 1972. Photo: Scott Bintner for Property Shark
96 Schermerhorn, Brooklyn Heights, home to St. J. Law School and graduate programs prior to 1972. Photo: Scott Bintner for Property Shark
Arial view of the Jamaica campus. Photo: usnews.com
Arial view of the Jamaica campus. Photo: usnews.com

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