"Brooklyn College of the College of the City of New York" was established on May 15, 1930, by the Board of Higher Education of the City of New York. Previously, in 1926, the board had authorized Brooklyn branches of the women's Hunter College and of the men's City College. Brooklyn College represented the merger of the two, and the first co-educational college in the city system.

In 1934, the architect Randolph Evans, who at the time worked for the Wood-Harmon Corporation, which built thoughtfully planned housing subdivisions throughout outer Brooklyn, sketched out an ideal campus for Brooklyn College to be built on a large plot of land his company owned in Midwood. In his idea campus, Georgian-style buildings faced onto a quadrangle with a high-towered library as the focal point.

In 1934, the architect Randolph Evans, who at the time worked for the Wood-Harmon Corporation, which built thoughtfully planned housing subdivisions throughout outer Brooklyn, sketched out an ideal campus for Brooklyn College to be built on a large plot of land his company owned in Midwood. In his idea campus, Georgian-style buildings faced onto a quadrangle with a high-towered library as the focal point. The land the time was being used in part as a golf course, in part as a football field, and, for a few weeks each year, as the staging area for the Barnum & Bailey Circus.

On December 21, 1934, the New York City Board of Estimate approved the city's purchase of the land, for a little more than $1.6 million, from the Wood-Harmon Corporation. The federal government's Public Works Administration allotted $5 million toward the construction of the campus during the great depression.

Construction began in 1935 and employed workers through the WPA. "This project is killing two birds with one stone," noted President Roosevelt when he laid the cornerstone at the new campus in 1936. "It is not only putting to work thousands of people who need work, but it also is improving the educational facilities now and for generations to come."

Indeed, Brooklyn College employed local workers and also educated local residents- the children of first-generation immigrants to the United States.

As the city's finances ebbed in the 1960s and 1970s, Brooklyn College's physical plant spiraled downward. The Quadrangle became a dustbowl. Things began to turn around in the 1980s and today the campus looks as good as ever.

The campus is a beautiful piece of urban design, presenting a congenial face to the city streets around it and offering the delight of the view onto the quad, toward the lovely library, from Bedford Avenue. At the southeast corner of Bedford Avenue and Campus Road is Boylan Hall, named for the college's first president. At the northeast corner of Bedford Avenue and the cut for the Long Island Railroad is Ingersoll Hall, named for the Brooklyn borough president when the college was built.