The Jesuit College in Brooklyn

This 1907 drawing illustrates better than anything else the ambitions that Jesuits had for their first Brooklyn foundation. That year they purchased from Brooklyn Bishop Charles E. McDonnell a piece of property that had once been the Kings County Penitentiary, located in a section of Brooklyn then known as Crow Hill (now Crown Heights). McDonnell had purchased it the year before but decided not to use it. The Jesuits had plans for a church building to rival Manhattan’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The church never met the grand expectations of its Jesuit founders, and financial difficulties forced the college closing in 1921. But the college’s high school division, Brooklyn Preparatory School, was a successful endeavor for many decades.