Before moving to the current Lincoln Park campus, Mount Royal College was located at 1128 7th Avenue SW, in the heart of Calgary's downtown, for over fifty years. The downtown location helped connect the fledgling college with students and sponsors, increased its community profile, and helped to establish the college as a pioneering educational institution. The original Mount Royal College building was constructed at a very brisk pace after the college charter was granted by the provincial government in 1911. The building, which was commonly known as 'The Barn' due to its gabled, barn-like appearance, was designed by James Garden and was originally intended to be a temporary structure. The plan was for the downtown college to be expanded with more permanent buildings as the college purchased land and gained more financial supporters. Three stories tall and L-shaped, The Barn cost only $59,000 to build; however, maintaining and renovating the building to meet the college's expanding needs would prove a costly challenge.

Initially, plans for Mount Royal's expansion seemed to be going as planned. The College's strong connection to the Methodist Church and the local prominence of college leaders and members of the Board of Governors resulted in Mount Royal receiving a number of donated tracts of land in the downtown area. Leading developers including James Shouldice, A.S. McKay Developers, Scott and Hartfront Ltd., and Dr. William Egbert donated more than 85 lots of downtown land, which were earmarked for new college buildings. By 1912, just a year after opening its doors, Mount Royal College owned over $222,000 worth of donated property assets.

Unfortunately, the local real estate bust of 1913 drastically changed the College's development plans. The abrupt slide into recession for the real estate and construction industries not only impacted the fortunes of many of Mount Royal's prosperous donors, but it also left the college unable to raise the property taxes it owed on both the temporary campus buildings and the donated parcels of land.

College leaders continued to hold out hope for an eventual downtown campus expansion. Despite ongoing financial difficulties caused by the real estate bust and decreased enrollment during World War I, MRC managed to hold onto much of the donated land for several decades. In the 1930s however, property taxes, rising construction costs, and costly renovations to keep the Barn functional forced the college to return the donated land to donors and the City of Calgary.

Forced to work with what they had, college leaders managed to make the downtown campus work for decades renovating the Barn, building additions, purchasing adjacent residential properties, and adding portable classrooms. The first expansions to campus began as early as 1928 with the purchase of several neighbouring residential homes and an actual barn. The new barn became the college's first gymnasium and the houses were renovated to become student residences and Conservatory classrooms.

Further expansion was undertaken in the 1940s to try and and alleviate overcrowding caused by increasing enrollment. The college purchased five more residential buildings from the Mewata Armory site, including the former home of Mount Royal founder George Kerby, and converted them into laboratories, reading rooms, and classrooms. After five years of fundraising, the college constructed the Kerby Memorial Building and Stanley Gym, which opened in 1949. However, space remained so limited that the college was forced to turn away students because of overcrowding. Smaller expansions, such as the construction of a chapel in 1951, a new wing to the Kerby Memorial building in 1957, a library renovation, and the addition of a student lounge and 120-seat cafeteria in 1961, allowed the college to continue to serve its growing student population.