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The College, Academy and Charity Schools continued to occupy the Fourth Street Campus until 1789. In that year, the former Trustees of the College took control of the campus for the second time. The displaced University of the State of Pennsylvania briefly leased the Hall of the American Philosophical Society.

A circa 1780 sketch of the Academy and College of Philadelphia when its first dormitory (on right) was built. The Academy of Philadelphia, a secondary school for boys, began operations in 1751 in an unused church assembly hall building at 4th and Arch Streets, which had sat unfinished and dormant for over a decade. Upon receiving a collegiate ...

In 1755, under the terms of the Additional Charter, the academy was granted collegiate rank and became the College, Academy and Charitable School of Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania, otherwise called the College of Philadelphia.

Penn dates its founding to 1740, when a plan emerged to build a Philadelphia charity school that would double as a house of worship. After construction was underway, however, the cost was seen to be much greater than the available resources, and the project went unfinished for a decade.