St. Mary’s
Academy was opened with eight students on September
8, 1880 by the Sisters of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM) from Toronto, Canada
in charge at the behest of the pastor of St. Patrick Church, Rev. Walter H. Power. A number of hardships and disappointments
during that first school year may have discouraged the nuns, but they prevailed and moved the school to St. Mary’s Parish
with the help of Chicago Archbishop James Feehan (Joliet was part of the Chicago diocese at the time).
The following
school year, 70 girls were enrolled when classes began exactly one year to the date from its original open date. A new building
was opened in 1883 as the school was chartered as St. Mary Academy
by the state and 200 students were enrolled. The first students graduated in 1886 as eight girls received their diplomas.
The "Ladies
of Loretto" (a nickname for the IBVM sisters) continued to educate the young ladies of the Joliet area, most of which were studying to take the state teaching exam. However, the order’s
numbers dwindled in Joliet around the time during World War
I in order to meet needs in other locations, so they decided to close the school in 1918. Of the 236 graduates from St. Mary’s,
153 received teaching certificates after graduation.
The school
building was turned over to the Sisters of Providence, who renamed the school Providence High School and continued
to operate in the same location until 1959 when the building was declared unsafe.
Further information
on St. Mary Academy and Providence High School was provided to us by our avid historian and good friend, Michael M.:
"When the original Providence High School building on Ottawa Street in downtown Joliet was condemned in 1959, it
was evacuated immediately, even though the construction of the beautiful new building that would eventually become the co-educational
Providence Catholic High School in New Lenox was still a long way off. Father Aloysius Sinsky,
the pastor of Saint Mary's Nativity Church near the corner of Ruby and Broadway Streets on the west side of Joliet, invited
the Sisters of Providence temporarily to relocate their small high school to the unused classrooms in his parish
grade school. So for several years between the evacuation of the old (original) building and the relocation to the (present)
new building, Providence High School bravely maintained its existence in borrowed space, using the four unused classrooms
on the first floor and the balcony in the school gymansium at St. Mary's Nativity Grade School.
Providence had only about five teachers at that time, and it is my recollection that the faculty membership maintained
a certain stability during those years. Faculty members during those "guest" years at St. Mary's Nativity included
Sister Marie Loretta (Principal); and Sister Remigia, Sister Joseph Eleanore, and Miss
Kuban. This must have been a particularly challenging assignment for the Sisters assigned to the school.
First of all, it must have been hard for them to feel completely at home in their borrowed surroundings, since St. Mary's
Nativity Grade School was not one of their own schools; it was run by a different Order of nuns, the Sisters of St. Francis
of Christ the King (whom I recall treated them with great kindness, as you would expect). Secondly, they didn't live
near their temporary campus. Rather, they lived in their convent near downtown Joliet in conjunction with
the Sisters of their own Order who ran the grade school at St. Mary Carmelite Parish. (In an unusual set
of circumstances for that era, St. Mary Carmelite School and Convent were at a distant location from the parish
Church, which was only one block away from the old Providence High School in downtown Joliet.)
When the new Providence High School was opened in 1962, it no longer operated as an academy of the Sisters
of Providence. Rather, it was a co-institutional (not co-educational, as it would later become) diocesan high school,
which the Sisters of Providence continued to help staff for several more years, but which was run for the diocese under the
administration of the Christian Brothers."
Brother David N. Kuebler, FSC, adds the following information:
"The first Christian Brother principal of the
new Providence H.S. in
New Lenox, IL, was
Brother Jeremiah Edmund Burke, FSC. The Assistant Principal in charge of discipline
was
Brother Kieran Daniel McMullen who later became Principal after
Brother Edmund was transferred
to another school (in the late 1960s).
Brother Daniel, my religion teacher, became quite well known
(and well liked) by going on television with his famous “SOS” proposal: “Save Our School.” Providence
was slated to be closed by the diocese in 1968, but, with
Brother Daniel’s charisma and charm, the
school remained open.
The brothers so impressed me that, in 1968, I joined the order to become one of them!"
Providence
High School later built a new location six miles east of Joliet in New
Lenox and still retains the Providence name as
it is known as Providence Catholic High School.
