Four Baptist institutions merged over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries to form Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (CRCDS) as it exists today.

Soap and candle magnate William Colgate, a devout Baptist, was an influential trustee in the Union for Ministerial Education and took an active role in financing and championing Hamilton Institution.

The Divinity School shared its South Goodman Street facilities with several organizations over the years.

The American Baptist Historical Society, serving the American Baptist Churches USA, also occupied the South Goodman Street campus in varying capacity from 1955 to 2008, when the Society's offices and archival collections were relocated to Mercer University in Atlanta.

[5] After selling its historic 90-year-old campus next to Highland Park in 2016,[6] Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School moved 2.2 miles north in 2019 to Village Gate Square[7] in Rochester's Neighborhood of the Arts, near the George Eastman Museum and Memorial Art Gallery.