Brooklyn’s Jesuit College (1908-1921)

Last updated on: March 18, 2011 at 6:06 am by Pat McNamara

Brooklyn’s Jesuit College (1908-1921) 2011-03-18T06:06:00-06:00 Pat McNamara

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A drawing of the proposed college building, ca. 1910.

JESUITS’ BROOKLYN COLLEGE
Building on Crown Heights to be Largest of its Kind
The New York Times, May 4, 1912

The largest college building in the world is being built by the Jesuit Fathers on Crown Heights, Brooklyn, between Eastern Parkway and Prospect Park. It is to be named Brooklyn College. The view from the hill where the college will stand is one of the finest in Brooklyn. It overlooks Manhattan on one side and the ocean on the other.

There will be one main structure, where the various departments will be housed, instead of separate buildings. This building will be 700 feet long and 200 feet wide. There will be four floors and a basement. About a third of the structure will be of glass, thus providing plenty of light and air. The building will be rectangular, with a dome at one end.

The building will cost about $2,000,000. There will be about 50,000 square feet of floor space for the use of students on each floor. Brooklyn College was originally designed solely for the use of the people of Brooklyn. It was incorporated by the State Board of Regents, and includes a college, which was opened in 1909; a high school, and a grammar school. The income will come from the tuitions of students. The Faculty will give its services without compensation.

The Brooklyn College League, composed of representative Catholics of the borough, has given $250,000 for construction. The architect is Raymond F. Almirall. The first class will be graduated on June 17, 1913. Many scholarships are open to students. Connected with the college will be one of the largest athletic fields in the country.

The above poster for the college and high school dates back to 1916. 

NOTE
Before the present-day Brooklyn College was founded in 1930 as part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, the Jesuits started a short-lived college with the same name over twenty years earlier. Its history belongs to the genre of “best laid plans” stories.

For a long time, the Jesuits wanted to start a Brooklyn foundation. But John Loughlin, the first Bishop (1853-1891), wouldn’t let them. Loughlin had a strong animosity toward religious orders of priests, apparently because he felt they “stole vocations” that might have gone to his diocese. (One of the few groups he did like were the Vincentians, who named a parish and a college, now St. John’s University, for him). In 1889, a Brooklyn Eagle reporter commented that Bishop Loughlin had an aversion for “two classes of persons– reporters and Jesuits.” (The difference was he spoke to the press now and then.)

After Loughlin’s death, however, the scene changed. Charles E. McDonnell, his successor, graduated from St. Francis Xavier College in Manhattan (now Xavier High School). When McDonnell was ordained a bishop, Father Thomas Campbell, the head of the New York Jesuits, preached at the Mass. The Woodstock Letters, an in-house Jesuit magazine, noted that Brooklyn, “long closed to us,” was a new field of opportunity.

In 1906, the Jesuits began arrangements to purchase the site of Brooklyn’s former penitentiary on Crow Hill, then a sparsely populated area. (In time the area grew rapidly, and was elegantly renamed Crown Heights.) In the fall of 1908, Brooklyn College opened to great acclaim, with a high school division that would be better known as “Brooklyn Prep.” (Jesuit colleges and universities are frequently named for the city where they were founded.) As the above article and drawing indicate, there were grand plans for the school.

Unfortunately, however, these plans never materialized. The college was never able to raise a sufficient endowment, and it faced stiff competition from two well established Catholic men’s colleges in the borough, St. John’s (now university) and St. Francis. In addition, Fordham and Xavier were already in place, and Brooklyn College may just have been a case of overextension. In 1921, the college closed, but the high school continued. Until its closing in 1972, it was one of the city’s premier boys’ high schools. It alumni include prominent educators, judges, military figures, and authors.

Two alumni, Penn State coach Joe Paterno and Exorcist author William Peter Blatty, graduated from the prep during the mid-1940’s. Both cite a young Jesuit teacher, Thomas V. Bermingham, as a major influence. Paterno remembers his Latin classes with Bermingham as one of the highlights of his high school experience. Bermingham also played a significant influence on Blatty’s writing career. (He appears briefly in the 1973 film of the same name.)

In 2003, Jesuit education returned to Brooklyn with the arrival of Brooklyn Jesuit Prep, a middle school in Crown Heights geared toward disadvantaged youth. The school is part of the Nativity school network, a model of urban education that began on New York’s Lower East Side and has spread nationwide.

*In the above poster, the name of Xavier apears underneath “Brooklyn College.” The reason is that Brooklyn College hadn’t yet gotten enough of a endowment to get its own charter, and was operating under the Xavier charter. In effect, it might be said that the school was basically operating as a Brooklyn campus for the Manhattan school.

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