Saint Peter’s College, the Jesuit College of New Jersey, was founded as a liberal arts college for men in 1872.  When classes first started in Jersey City on September 2, 1878, seventy-one students originally enrolled in the Preparatory Department. That number grew to one hundred and twenty-three by year’s end. They aged from ten to fifteen, and thus none of them were doing college-level work.  As more students arrived, work began on a new school building on Grand Street in 1899.