[1] St. Mary's Church, as it was then named, was founded in 1848 as a parish consisting mostly of Irish immigrants to the United States.

John Ryan, a Jesuit of St. John's College (the antecedent of Fordham University), who canonically established the parish and requested that it be named the Church of the Immaculate Conception, which it took as its official name by 1848, although it continued to be frequently referred to as St. Mary's.

The original church was designed by Patrick Keely; it is now the parish hall.

Beginning in 1857, this school was staffed by nuns of the Sisters of Charity, who were later replaced by the Lasallian Christian Brothers in 1861.

[3] Immaculate Conception was designed by Lawrence J. O'Connor in the Richardsonian Romanesque style.