The plan for organizing this Society, and founding this Institution, originated with the late Levi Silliman Ives, D.D., LL.D., formerly bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of North Carolina, but who joined the Roman Catholics while on a visit to Rome, in 1852. The act of incorporation passed the Legislature April 14, 1863, making it the duty of the courts that "whenever the parent, guardian, or next of kin of any Catholic child about to be finally committed shall request the magistrate to commit the child to the Catholic Institution, the magistrate shall grant the request."

The management of this Institution is committed to a board of about twenty-five laymen of the Roman Catholic church, the Mayor, Recorder, and Comptroller of New York being annually added as members ex officio. The Society began its labors soon after its organization, in a hired house in the upper part of the city, receiving at first only boys; but after a few months a girls' department was added. Their first plan was to apprentice the children after a very short detention at the Protectory, but their Third Annual Report pronounces the apprenticeship system, as then practised, a "great evil," and for two reasons: 1. Because the children were not prepared by previous discipline and education to ensure contentment, obedience, and fidelity. 2. That the avarice of the persons to whom they were apprenticed caused most of them to be overworked, their education neglected, and the necessary supplies of food and clothing withheld. Three-fourths of those apprenticed up to that time, it was stated, had "become perfectly worthless." The crowded condition of their buildings, and the manifest necessity of retaining the children until sober and industrious habits had been formed, induced the managers to purchase a farm of one hundred and fourteen acres (since increased to one hundred and forty acres), at West Farms, three miles above Harlem bridge. On the first of May, 1866, their lease having expired at Yorkville, the family of four hundred boys was transferred to West Farms, and quartered in farm-houses, and such other buildings as could be secured, until a wing of the present building could be completed. This wing was greatly crowded for two years previous to the completion of the main building, seven hundred or eight hundred boys, with their overseers and instructors, having constantly occupied it, it furnishing all their apartments, besides appropriating space for workshops, offices, etc. The main structure is now completed. The original wing is two hundred and fifteen feet long, forty feet wide, and four stories high, while the front and main edifice, which forms a transept or colossal cross, presents a handsome façade of two hundred and thirty feet, is fifty feet wide, and five stories high, with attic. It is a truly imposing structure, surmounted by a lofty tower, is built of brick, with marble trimmings, in the French Gothic style of architecture, and cost $350,000. They are now able to increase the family of boys to about twelve hundred, and afford them much better accommodations than ever before.

The boys are wholly committed to the control and education of the Christian Brothers, belonging to the society originally organized in France by Jean Baptiste De La Salle, in 1681. They are a society of laymen organized for the gratuitous education of the poor, giving themselves wholly to the church as teachers, laboring, wherever appointed, with a salary just sufficient to meet their expenses. When they take the vows of the order they renounce all plans of business, and all thoughts of entering the priesthood. In 1844 some of the fraternity emigrated to Canada, and in 1847 found their way into the United States. Brother Teliow, the Rector (superintendent), an educated Prussian, a gentlemen of modest bearing, but of wise and decided administrative ability, has had. control of the House since its opening. He is assisted by twenty-two of the brothers, who eat and sleep in the rooms with the boys, superintend their toil and studies, attend them at worship, and in their recreations. The brothers are usually mild and generous in their treatment, seldom inflicting corporal punishment, but more wisely appealing to their honor and interests. Neither the grounds nor the buildings have any formidable enclosures, and the boys are often sent to the village, and sometimes to New York, entrusted with horses and other responsible matters. True, some forget to return, but the policy of trusting them is believed to do immensely more good than evil, and when one absconds a hundred are ready to volunteer as detectives, to compel his return.