The History of Saint Joseph's Seminary and College, est. 1896
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Saint Joseph’s Seminary and College, founded in 1896, is the Major Seminary of the Archdiocese of New York and the fifth educational institution of the Archdiocese for the formation of Catholic priests. Previous Archdiocesan seminaries had been established in Nyack (1833-1834), Lafargeville (1838-1840), Fordham (1840-1862) and Troy (1864-1896).
Archbishop Michael Corrigan, wishing to relocate his Seminary closer to New York City, laid the cornerstone for Saint Joseph’s Seminary in the Dunwoodie section of Yonkers on May 17, 1891. The first academic year began on September 21, 1896 with 96 seminarians. For the first ten years, the Seminary was directed by priests of the Society of San Sulpice, who composed the majority of the Faculty during those years. In 1906, the Archdiocese constituted a new Administration and Faculty composed largely of diocesan priests, a practice which has remained to this day.
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The Dunwoodie Campus extends for forty acres atop Valentine Hill in Yonkers. Its buildings are constructed of gray mile-square granite, most of which was quarried on site. Successive Archbishops of New York (Cardinals Farley, Hayes, Spellman, Cooke, O’Connor, Egan and Dolan) have enlarged the institution and its buildings. The main Seminary building is constructed in early Renaissance style, with the cross over the cupola reaching one hundred and fifty feet above the ground. The Chapel, auditorium, classrooms, offices and dining facilities are on the first floor and rooms for faculty, seminarians and guests are on the upper three floors.
Also on the campus are the Archbishop Corrigan Memorial Library (a separate building of three stories on the fourth side of thecloister, with entrances from the first floor of the main building and from the outside), the Pope Benedict XVI Hall (a building with classrooms and both Seminary and Archdiocesan offices), the Archbishop Hughes Archives Center (a state-of-the-art facility which houses the Archdiocesan Archives as well as the ADNY offices of vocations and youth ministry) and the Archdiocesan Instructional Television facilities.
To the west of these buildings are the outdoor recreational facilities of the Seminary: a baseball and softball diamond, soccer field and tennis court, as well as several paths for walking and jogging. The Cardinal Spellman Recreation Center, completed in 1967, contains basketball courts, weight room, squash courts, a swimming pool, steam rooms and bowling lanes.
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Since its founding, Saint Joseph’s Seminary has served the Church in its primary mission of educating and forming future Priests. In light of this mission, Saint Joseph’s was authorized by the Board of Regents of the State of New York to grant the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1908, Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in 1921 and Bachelor of Divinity in 1965. The New York State Education Department granted Saint Joseph’s permission to offer the Master of Divinity Degree in 1971 and the Master of Arts Degree in Theology in 1987.
In addition, Saint Joseph’s Seminary has been accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education since 1961 and the Association of Theological Schools since 1973.
The Seminary is also affiliated with the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome, which allows for seminarians to receive the Pontifical Bachelor of Sacred Theology degree (S.T.B.) and which represents an acknowledgement of the Seminary’s intellectual formation program as the ecclesiastical equivalent of the “First Cycle” in the Roman Pontifical University system.
In 1976, the Seminary’s mission expanded to include the theological education of the laity and religious and Saint Joseph’s received approval from New York State to offer a Master of Arts Degree in Religious Education through the Seminary’s Archdiocesan Catechetical Institute (A.C.I.). Thereafter, in 1993, Saint Joseph’s began to administer the Master of Arts Degree in Religious Studies and the A.C.I. became the Institute of Religious Studies.
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St. Joseph’s Seminary has been blessed by the visits of two reigning Popes: Pope Saint John Paul II, who celebrated Vespers with the Seminary community on October 5, 1995, and Pope Benedict XVI, who led a Youth Rally for seminarians and over 25,000 young people on the Seminary grounds on April 19, 2008.
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In November of 2011, Timothy Cardinal Dolan (Archbishop of New York), Most Reverend Nicholas DiMarzio (Bishop of Brooklyn) and Most Reverend William Murphy (Bishop of Rockville Centre) signed a Joint Operating Agreement that pledged the cooperation of the three Catholic dioceses of the downstate New York region in a single program of graduate-level priestly formation at Saint Joseph’s Seminary. Subsequently, in March of 2012, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the three Ordinaries which resulted in the aggregation of all diocesan Masters Degree programs, faculty and students across all three dioceses to Saint Joseph’s Seminary. Since 2013, Saint Joseph’s Seminary has served as the single degree-granting institution for all diocesan sponsored Masters Degree Programs in lower New York State.
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