The campus as you see it today reflects the development of a college that was established in the eighteenth century and expanded over the course of the nineteenth century.
A royal charter established Queen’s College 1766 at the request of the Dutch Reformed Church, making it the eighth oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges.
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In 1808, the estate of James Parker conveyed the New Brunswick city block to Queen’s College to serve as the home for the college. The block was an apple orchard and a former Revolutionary War site, situated on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape, called “Lenapehoking.”
From Old Queens (1809), the original multipurpose building constructed specifically for Queen’s College, to the completion of Winants Hall (1890), erected as the first dormitory for Rutgers College, the buildings that comprise the campus appear today much as they did more than a century ago.
The college was originally named Queen’s College in recognition of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the queen consort of King George III. In 1825, the trustees of the college changed the name to Rutgers College, in recognition of Colonel Henry Rutgers, a benefactor and revolutionary war patriot who was also an owner of enslaved persons.
Queen’s Campus was designated as a historic district on the New Jersey and the National Registers of Historic Places in 1973.
Welcome to Historic Queen’s Campus at Rutgers University
