The school expanded to a high school division and eventually took in boarders around World War II, when about 300 students lived on campus.
St. George was initially located at 910 Lawerance Avenue on the city’s
North Side, but moved in 1921 to 4545 Drexel because of increased enrollment.
The high school opened at that time, but it became too large to handle and returned to an elementary school in 1938, according to the archives of the Hyde Park Herald. In
1934, Anne Tyskling arrived at the school as a teacher, and assumed the director’s role two years later to guide the future of the school.
After closing the high school down and getting
thru World War II, St. George went thru a period of consternation which included having to move the school, financial crisis,
and the threat of closing the school. Mrs. Tyskling did what she could to keep the school open, including having to move to the Rodfei Zedek Temple on East 54th Place.
Another hallmark moment that St. George endured was
in 1952 when the school was threatened with eviction due to admitting a Hindu child into the school. For
those who lived around the school, the child was thought to be African-American
as the city of Chicago was experiencing an influx
of people from the southern part of the United States, and since the school was located in a
neighborhood where the neighbors objected nor cared, St.
George rose above the situation by becoming a model to other schools in how they accepted all children, regardless of their race, creed, and color.
The school survived the
issues and relocated again to 4810 Ellis in a building that was purchased by Tyskling, then grew to 145 students within a matter of years, at which time St. George and Harvard School for Boys began talks to merge their schools together. The Board of Directors for St. George agreed to buy Harvard School and bring together students
from K-12 in an intergrated setting,
completing its mission in time for the 1962-63 school year
