The Move to Remsen Street

Vision of the proposed Remsen Street campus (Yearbook 1962)

Work on the Remsen Street campus (Yearbook 1963)

Remsen Street Campus 1963 (Yearbook 1963)

Having purchased two office buildings from Brooklyn Union Gas Company on Remsen Street, St. Francis College officially moved to its new campus in 1963 allowing it to double its enrollment.

As the 1963 Yearbook states, this move "was not merely a step from old buildings to new, from one area to another; it was a transformation and the formulation of a new image and purpose." (Yearbook 1963)

The move to Remsen Street was in part about recalibrating the college and establishing it as a truly modern, urban college. A college that is able to meet the needs of the modern city. 

"The era of the urban commuter college is reaching its height. The day college is naturally suited to the great city and New York, with its vast museums and libraries and concert halls and theatres, is one of the great student cities of the world. New York is growing with the nation and with the world and we are growing with New York. We are growing for the city, to serve the city, to be the city, to meet the city where it needs us. We, the students, benefit from the metropolis, breathe in its vastness and take something of that vastness for ourselves. The metropolis educates us as much as our books, our professors, our acquaintances. It is our home and our teacher." (Yearbook 1963)

"We are now incorporating and living the responsibilities, the leadership, and the courage expected of a college in our modern world. We now go to make up part of this energy, this hope, these forces which shape our world. Our new location has committed us to participate, to challenge and to be challenged, to call out in question and to answer, to give as well as to demand, and always under all circumstances— to be there." (Yearbook 1966)