[3] With the assistance of noted attorney William J. Duane (1780–1865), in the 1820s, he wrote a long will and testament, outlining every detail of how his fortune would be used.

In addition to extensive personal and institutional bequests, he left the bulk of his fortune to the city of Philadelphia to build and operate a residential school.

Its endowment and financial resources are held in trust by the courts of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which provides much of the school's operating budget.

The city was then at the forefront of creating innovative American institutions designed to solve a specific social challenge, such as the newly founded and constructed Eastern State Penitentiary (humane incarceration), the Pennsylvania Hospital (mental illness), the Pennsylvania Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb (disabilities), and the Franklin Institute (scientific knowledge).

Girard chose to dedicate his immense fortune to helping educate young men of Philadelphia as Americans for the future.

)[5] From May 1954, with the U. S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, there was increasing pressure on Girard College to accept racial integration, as the city's public schools had long been.

After an extended, bitter, 14-year civil-rights struggle led by Cecil B. Moore – including Martin Luther King Jr.'s August 1965 address to a crowd outside Girard's front gates ("[Philadelphia,] the cradle of liberty, that has ... a kind of Berlin Wall to keep the colored children of God out")[6] – the first four black boys entered the school in September 1968.

Not part of the School District of Philadelphia, which had long been racially integrated (as being in a northern, formerly "free state"), Girard College was still considered "private" even though it had a very public educational mission and was racially segregated long before the consideration of the "Brown v. Board of Education" legal case.

Perhaps the key to the ruling was that Girard, following its founder's will, was administered by the "Board of Directors of City Trusts", and that public institution could not continue to maintain the historically outdated entrance requirement.

[7] The police used repressive tactics toward the protests including motorcycle and foot charges into the crowds and arrests, beginning on May 5.

[citation needed] In May 2009 Girard College named Autumn Adkins as its 16th president, the first female chief administrator in its (then) 160-year existence.

[14] The instrument is used for occasional concerts and has been recorded by such organists as Virgil Fox and Carlo Curley, who was director of music at Girard College in 1970 when he was 18 years old.

[citation needed] Founder's Hall at Girard College (1833–1847)[16] is considered one of the finest examples of American Greek Revival architecture, for which it is designated a National Historic Landmark.

Nicholas Biddle (1786–1844) was chairman of the School's building committee, banker and financier, and president of the later revived and reorganized Second Bank of the United States in Philadelphia.