Saint Joseph School collection

In August of 1846, two new Chicago parishes were established for German-speaking Catholics – St. Peter’s downtown and St. Joseph on the northeast corner of Chicago Avenue and Cass (Wabash) Avenue. A school was quickly associated with St. Joseph Parish, initially staffed by Holy Cross Sisters from Notre Dame, IN and then by lay teachers. In 1861, the Chicago church asked Boniface Wimmer, OSB of St. Vincent Abbey in Latrobe, PA for priests to staff the parish. The abbot sent Rev. Louis Fink, OSB and a deacon, Meinrad Jeggle, who Bishop James Duggan ordained when he arrived in Chicago. Through Abbot Wimmer, Fr. Fink requested Benedictine sisters from Mount St. Benedict in Erie and the first three sisters arrived on August 23, 1861. Frances Knapp, OSB, Antonia Hermann, OSB, and Aloysia Gonzaga Konradi, OSB started the Chicago adventure in a one room frame house with a curtain divider that served as St. Joseph School and St. Joseph Convent. By 1864, the parish built a new school, “next to the frame parish church on the corner of Cass Street and Chicago Avenue, in the 22nd block.” Genevieve Harrison, OSB (1961) Where There Was Need. Boys and girls were taught at this school.

At Cass and Orleans, the sisters also established St. Joseph Academy as a boarding and day school for girls in 1865. The building housing the boarding students was in block 23, across the street from St. Joseph School.

After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the parish moved north, purchasing a plot bordered by Market (Orleans), Hill, Franklin, and Elm Streets for the church, rectory, and school. As the sisters determined how to proceed, Mother Theresa Krug, OSB was advised to buy 5 lots south of the St. Joseph Parish property and she began construction of a convent there. That location would develop into the motherhouse and Ss. Benedict and Scholastica Academy for girls.

In 1874, at Hill and Franklin Streets, directly behind the church (now next to the Brown and Purple Line “el” tracks), the new St. Joseph School was built; the sisters educated girls and small boys and a male teacher taught boys grades 4 through 8. From the Archives Newsletter, v. 17, nos. 7 and 8: “Our sisters taught at St. Joseph’s from 1861 until 1984. For a very short time all instruction was in German; soon it was in German and English and, as the parish increased in size and numbers, all English was taught except for one German language class. For at least five decades, the older boys were taught by Teacher Nicholas Dreher, a man venerated by his pupils as a saintly, hard-working, dedicated person.”

A new school building for St. Joseph School was built in 1948 on the plot of land where Ss. Benedict and Scholastica Academy once stood, the southeast corner of Orleans and Hill Streets. Today, St. Joseph and Immaculate Conception have joined to form one school for students Prekindergarten through 8th grade.