New York University history

After the charter was granted, the first classes began in October of 1832, in a rented building near City Hall.

In 1835, the council purchased the northeast block of Washington Square East for $40,000 and constructed a new facility there.

New York University College of Medicine was established in 1841.

The council resolves in 1867 to admit women to the "benefits of the Institution." Credit: NYU Archives

In 1872, NYU Professor Steven Smith founded the American Public Health Association.

The university’s present name was adopted in 1894.

The medical school merged with Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1898 to form the University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College.

Then, in 1914, NYU made the decision to establish an additional undergraduate program downtown that would serve commuter students.

Washington Square Park Aerial View with NYU Buildings, circa 1926.

By 1931, not only was it the city’s largest private institution, it was the nation’s largest as well.

Also in 1934, the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences is founded.

With the largest private enrollment in the country—an astonishing 47,000 students by 1939—NYU had in many ways become the great urban university its founders dreamed of.

In February 1943, the Chance Vought Division of United Aircraft established a scholarship to bring women who had majored in mathematics and physics at the nation's leading colleges to train at NYU's Guggenheim School of Aeronautical Engineering.

In 1965 Diamond signed a recording contract with Bang Records, and one year later his debut album, The Feel of Neil, was released.

In 1973, NYU sold the University Heights campus to the City University of New York for $61.9 million and with this money, $34 million was used towards endowment and the remainder was used to “pay off debts, reduce spending deficits, and increase its retirement fund”.

In 1980 Diamond made his motion picture debut: he starred in a remake of the film The Jazz Singer, for which he also wrote and performed the sound track.

In 1984, seeking to achieve what its recently appointed president, John Brademas, called “a new position of eminence in American higher education,” NYU undertook one of the first billion-dollar capital campaigns in academic history.

In 1989, Jan T. Vilcek and Junming Le create a monoclonal antibody against TNF alpha, leading to the development of the anti-inflammatory drug Remicade.

In 1994, NYU’s global presence gained a powerful centerpiece when Sir Harold Acton bequeathed Villa La Pietra, a 57-acre estate in Florence—at the time the largest single gift made to an American university.

In 1998, the Mount Sinai-NYU Health System was established when the NYU Medical System merged with Mount Sinai Hospitals.

The union dissolved in 2003 while confronting a shared debt of $665.6 million, but NYU continued to award Mount Sinai's degrees.

Ric Burns, New York An Illustrated History, expanded edition (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 57

The University has seen explosive growth in grant funding for its research – a more than 120% increase since 2010.

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.

A second campus, NYU Shanghai, followed in 2013.