St. John's University

Lore & Background

St. John's University was founded in 1870 by the Vincentian Fathers of the Catholic Church in response to an invitation by the first Bishop of Brooklyn, John Loughlin, to provide the youth of the city with a Catholic intellectual and moral education. Originally established as the College of St. John the Baptist, the first campus was located at 75 Lewis Avenue, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Ground was broken for St. John's College Hall, the university's first building, on May 28, 1868. The cornerstone was laid on July 25, 1869. It opened for educational purposes on September 5, 1870. Beginning with the law school in 1925, St. John's began establishing other graduate and undergraduate schools, and became a university in 1933. In April 1936, St. John's bought the Hillcrest Golf Club's 100 acres of land for about $500,000, with the intention of eventually moving the school to the new site. On February 11, 1954, St. John's officially broke ground on a new campus in Hillcrest, Queens, on the former site of the Hillcrest Golf Club. During the official groundbreaking ceremony, the shovel used was the same shovel that had broken ground on the original campus in 1868. The following year, the original school of the university, St. John's College, moved from Bedford-Stuyvesant to the new campus. Over approximately the next two decades, the other schools of the university, which were located at a separate campus at 96 Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn, moved out to the new campus in Queens. The last of the schools to relocate to Queens moved there in 1972, bringing an end to the Downtown Brooklyn campus of the university. In 1959, the university established a Freedom Institute to provide lectures and programs that would, in the words of university president John A. Flynn, focus 'attention on the dangers of communism threatening free institutions here and abroad,' with Arpad F. Kovacs of the St. John's history department as its director. The university also hired the noted historian Paul Kwan-Tsien Sih to establish an Institute of Asian Studies in that same year, and similarly set up a Center for African Studies under the directorship of the economic geographer Hugh C. Brooks. The university received praise from Time Magazine in 1962 for being a Catholic university that accepted Jews with low household income. Time also ranked St. John's as 'good−small' on a list of the nation's Catholic universities in 1962. The St. John's University strike of 1966–1967 was a protest by faculty at the university which began on January 4, 1966, and ended in June 1967. The strike began after 31 faculty members were dismissed in the fall of 1965 without due process, dismissals which some felt were a violation of the professors' academic freedom. The strike ended without any reinstatements, but led to the widespread unionization of public college faculty in the New York City area. In 1970, arbitrators ruled that the university had not acted improperly. On January 27, 1971, the New York State Board of Regents approved the consolidation of the university with the former Notre Dame College (New York), a private women's college, and the Staten Island campus of St. John's University became a reality. Classes began in the fall of 1971, combining the original Notre Dame College with the former Brooklyn campus of St. John's, offering undergraduate degrees in liberal arts, business and education. The Grymes Hill campus on Staten Island was closed in 2024. Circa 1989, according to Steve Fishman of New York Magazine, 'St. John's was essentially a commuter school' but that changed after Donald Harrington became the president of the university that year, replacing Joseph Cahill. During his tenure, the school increased its infrastructure and international profile. By 1990, the tuition and fees at St. John's was less than half of that at schools like NYU and Columbia. Moreover, in 1999, the university completed the first residence halls on the main Queens campus, making it easier for out-of-state and international students to attend the flagship campus. The university is now led by Brian Shanley, former president of Providence College. Beginning in 1995, the university began a series of acquisitions lasting for the following 22 years and establishing new locations throughout New York and the world. In 1995, St. John's established its first international campus in Rome, Italy. The campus offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees. In 2001, St. John's acquired The College of Insurance in Manhattan. The school was converted to the School of Risk Management and added several programs to the St. John's academic portfolio, including Actuarial Science. The campus also included additional dormitories in downtown Manhattan. In 2008, the university established a location in Paris, France, with residential accommodations and multiple programs. The location's purpose allowing students to complete a portion of their studies under St. John's faculty in France while being exposed to the cultural offerings of the city.

Reader's Guide

St. John's University is a real-world institution located in Queens, New York City, with additional campuses in Manhattan, Rome (Italy), Paris (France), and Limerick (Ireland). Its Staten Island campus closed in May 2024. The university was founded in 1870 by the Vincentian Fathers and originally located in Brooklyn. It moved its flagship campus to Queens in the 1950s. St. John's is organized into five undergraduate schools and six graduate schools, offering more than 100 degree programs. In 2026, it had 15,640 undergraduate and 3,749 graduate students, making it the third largest Catholic university in the U.S. by enrollment. The student body represents 46 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and 119 countries. As of 2020, alumni total more than 190,000 worldwide.

Did You Know?

• In 1936, St. John's bought the Hillcrest Golf Club's 100 acres for about $500,000, intending to move the school there; the groundbreaking shovel used in 1954 was the same one used for the original campus in 1868.
• In 2014, Conrado Gempesaw became the first ever lay person to be appointed President of St. John's University; in 2021, Brian Shanley became the first non-Vincentian Catholic priest appointed president.