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Historic Sites

Risen from the Ashes: St. Joseph’s Preparatory School and the Gesu Church, Part 2

As the Gesu parish flourished, so did St. Joseph’s Preparatory School. By 1927, the University moved from North Philadelphia to a new campus on City Line Avenue, giving the secondary school much more space. It was also in the 1920s that the school became known as “The Prep” and its students as “Preppers.” Because of its high academic standards, easy access to public transportation, and relatively low tuition, it attracted students from all over Philadelphia and its suburbs. Some hailed from as far away as Trenton, Phoenixville, and Cape May. Some of their fathers were doctors and lawyers; others were factory workers and shop owners. Most parents were upwardly-mobile and very involved in their children’s education. Above all, the school was a Philadelphia melting pot. As Preppers, students could form friendships outside of their respective economic classes and neighborhoods.


Old St. Joseph’s Preparatory School and University,
c.1910. Collection of St. Joseph’s Preparatory School.

The Marble Staircase, the old St. Joseph’s
Preparatory Building, c. 1925, Collection of
St. Joseph’s Preparatory School.

According to a school history, the Jesuits impressed upon their charges that they should be “polite, as that is the surest sign of a gentleman and therefore they should diligently observe all the little customs prescribed by their teachers.” The students were also told to be “friendly with their peers and avoid quarreling, fighting, and language of low-breeding.” iii



Classes began at 9am and continued until 2:30pm. Students then participated in extracurricular activities and sports, with football being the most popular. Coach Frank Caton of the Fairmount Rowing Club started the crew team in the late 1920s. A dramatic club put on Shakespeare plays, and those interested in debate participated in the Barbelin Society — talented Jesuits advised both groups.iv

Sandy MacMurtrie, class of 1945, commuted to The Prep from his family’s home at 912 S. 49th Street. His family, parishioners at St. Francis de Sales Church on Baltimore Avenue, sent three sons to the Prep. Sandy and a few of his West Philadelphia classmates would catch the Number 70 trolley to Girard Avenue, and then hop the Number 15 to 17th Street. Mass would be said at 8am every day, with prayers offered to the alumni in the service — including Sandy’s brother Francis who was tragically killed in the Pacific.

The situation in Europe cast a shadow over school life, but the students still pulled old fashioned hijinks. In September 1941, The Prep scored a major football victory over South Catholic High School. The following morning, students held a celebratory pep rally in the auditorium. No one knows who walked out the door first, but scores of Preppers (including MacMurtrie) paraded down Broad Street, cheering and singing at the top of their lungs. The headmaster met the students at Rayburn Plaza and ordered them to turn around. To no avail. By the time the students reached South Catholic at 8th and Christian, the Prep’s headmaster had sent several squad cars there to meet them. The administration punished the offending students accordingly: for the next 2 days after school, they had to walk in circles around the schoolyard for 3 hours.v

* * * *

Within days of the fire of 1966, the Prep was back in business. Classes met in the one surviving building on Thompson Street. In spite of crowded and primitive conditions, enrollment did not decline. Most importantly, the administration decided the school would remain in North Philadelphia.

For teacher Gus Kueny Jr. ‘53, the decision to stay was a reaffirmation of the school’s social mission. “So many businesses and schools are closing up and leaving the city,” Kueny said at the time. “What could we accomplish by moving out? Kids come here from every neighborhood, from every suburb. For kids like this, just coming into this neighborhood shows them something they wouldn’t see out in the suburbs. It’s part of their education.” vi

The new school building would be built just south of the Church of the Gesu, on land acquired from the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority. Ground was broken on May 29, 1967, and Cardinal John Krol consecrated the modern, $4.5 million structure a year and a half later.vii


Exterior of the old St. Joseph’s Preparatory Building
and Church of the Gesu, c. 1960, Collection of
St. Joseph’s Preparatory School.

Interior of Church of the Gesu, photograph by
Steven B. Ujifusa.

In the 1990s, due to falling parish membership, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia deactivated the Church of the Gesu as a parish. But St. Joseph’s Preparatory stepped in to save Father Villiger’s dream church. This remarkable structure now serves as the school’s chapel, hosting student masses several times a year. Its attached independent school, the Gesu School, is a model for inner city elementary education.

Today, The Prep has about 800 students, and continues to draw in students from all over the Philadelphia area. Despite its urban location, the Prep has found that more and more of its students are from the suburbs. Naturally, this has led to some tensions with the surrounding neighborhood, especially as the student body became more affluent. At the same time, the Prep opportunities for community service not possible in a suburban location, such as tutoring low-income elementary students at the Gesu School.

“We’ve been struggling to keep a base in the city,” said current headmaster Father George Bur S.J., ’59. “When I was there as a student, between 60 and 70 percent the students were from the city, now it’s only about 20 percent, and we are working to reach out to the Latino and African-American communities.” viii

A recent alumnus, Richard Pagano ’98, recently mused on the meaning of the school’s motto “Men for Others”: “Community service,” he said, “and the idea of commitment to aiding and providing for not only those less fortunate, but the community as a whole, is such a big part of that school. The school imbues in you a desire to succeed, to achieve, to make a name for yourself, and not to be complacent…the school’s location, and Jesuit ideals, cannot be discounted for doing that.”

Note: Special thanks to Bill Avington, Bill Conners, Father George Bur S.J., James Hill Jr., Gus Keuny, Sandy MacMurtrie, and Richard Pagano for their invaluable assistance.

References:

[iii] Rev. James J. Gormley, S.J., Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School, A History 125 Years, 1851-1979, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School, 1976, p.12. Collection of St. Joseph’s Preparatory School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

[iv] Rev. James J. Gormley, S.J., Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School, A History 125 Years, 1851-1979, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School, 1976, pp.46, 65, 105.

[v] Interview with Sandy MacMurtrie, August 27, 2010.

[vi] James Smart, “In Our Town: A Sentimental Alumnus Busy Rebuilding the Prep,” The Evening Bulletin, November 8, 1968. Collection of St. Joseph’s Preparatory School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

[vii] Rev. James J. Gormley, S.J., Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School, A History 125 Years, 1851-1979, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School, 1976, pp.155-156. Collection of St. Joseph’s Preparatory School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

[viii] Interview with Father George Bur, S.J, August 27, 2010.

Categories
Historic Sites

Risen from the Ashes: St. Joseph’s Preparatory School and the Gesu Church, Part 1


Old St. Joseph’s Preparatory School on fire,
January 30, 1966. Collection of St. Joseph’s
Preparatory School.
On the early morning of January 30, 1966, a watchman spotted a fire smoldering in the basement of St. Joseph’s Preparatory School. He alerted Brother Stanley Leikus, S.J., who ran onto Stiles Street at 5:30am and pulled the firebox. But it was too late. The blaze ripped through the century-old Second Empire style main structure, consuming classrooms, libraries, and the white marble staircase at the school entrance.
Within an hour, eight fire companies had arrived at St. Joseph’s Preparatory, but high winds whipped the flames into a ferocious firestorm. It was a bone-chilling ten degrees, and giant sheets of ice from the fire hoses encrusted the blazing building’s façade.

At the neighboring Gesu Church, Jesuit brothers gathered up relics and vestments and moved them to safety. With smoking billowing around him, Headmaster Joseph Ayd S.J. shut the fire doors separating the burning school and the Gesu Church and then fled for his life.


After the fire. Collection of St. Joseph’s
Preparatory School, January 30, 1966.

After the fire. Collection of St. Joseph’s
Preparatory School, January 30, 1966.

At 8:00am, the Stiles Street building of St. Joseph’s Preparatory collapsed with a great roar, and a shower of sparks rained down upon the Gesu Church. If the Gesu’s wooden structure caught fire, the flames would almost certainly spread to surrounding houses.

Finally, at 9:13 am, the fireman had brought the blaze under control. The Gesu Church and its parish school were safe. But St. Joseph’s Preparatory School was a total loss, a blackened, gutted shell of its former self. Its 800 students were homeless, as well as its 40 Jesuit priests.i

There was no question that “The Prep” would rebuild. It was one of the crown jewels of Philadelphia’s Catholic school system, taking in bright boys and giving them opportunities they otherwise would have been denied. As a result, it had a loyal alumni base. But at the time of the fire, North Philadelphia was in severe economic decline, and many wondered if the school would move elsewhere and cater to a more affluent suburban clientele.

* * * *

St. Joseph’s Preparatory is an outgrowth of the oldest Roman Catholic parish in Philadelphia: St. Joseph’s Church, founded in 1733 by the Society of Jesus and located at 3rd and Walnut. Thanks to William Penn’s “Charter of Privileges,” St. Joseph’s Church was the only place in the British Empire where people could publically celebrate a Roman Catholic Mass. Following American independence, the parish, as well its college preparatory school (founded in 1851), grew by leaps and bounds, thank in large part to an influx of Irish and German immigrants. But by the mid-nineteenth century, the Jesuits were running out of space and needed to move.

In the 1860s, the Jesuits brought in Swiss-born Father J. Burchard Villiger to raise funds to build a new complex for the preparatory school and university. Villiger, educated at Georgetown University, had a genius for networking with the city’s upwardly mobile Roman Catholic elite, most notably the Drexels and Bouviers. In 1866, the Jesuits bought the entire 1700 block of Stiles Street in then-rural North Philadelphia as the site for a Catholic preparatory school and university. Appropriately, it was only a few blocks away from the Bouvier mansion on North Broad Street. Villiger quickly raised the money to build a large Second Empire-style school and university building, which boasted eighteen foot ceilings, a white marble staircase, and mansard roofs.

He then turned his attention to building a parish church, which would also be utilized by the school and university. His model was the home church of the Society of Jesus in Rome: hence, it would be named the Church of the Gesu. In 1878, Archbishop Frederic James Wood gave Villiger permission to start building to a set of plans by architect Edwin Forrest Durang.

Villiger planned on a grand scale: the church would be 115 feet wide and 250 feet deep. Its highest vault would soar 100 feet above the nave’s floor. Villiger purchased five bells for the towers, as well as a set of ecclesiastical paintings by Mexican artist Miguel Cabrera. He also had a passion for collecting relics, to be displayed in reliquaries set in the church’s side chapels.

But even the persuasive Villiger had trouble the raising funds to achieve his vision. Construction of the church took a decade and proceeded fitfully. He hoped to use gleaming marble to adorn the interior of the church. As a fundraising ploy, Villiger had the interiors completed in raw white plaster. According to a history of the church, the savvy Jesuit reasoned that “people would grow tired of it and buy the marbles of which he dreamed.” Ultimately, the white interiors were elaborately painted in a faux-marble finish by Brother Schroen, S.J.


Easter Sunday Mass at the Church of the
Gesu, 1913. Collection of St. Joseph’s
Preparatory School.

If Villiger couldn’t get his marble trim, he did secure a hefty $72,000 gift (over $1.5 million in today’s money) from the estate of Francis A. Drexel to complete the church, which was dedicated with great pomp in 1882. By the time Villiger died in 1902, critics had hailed the Gesu as one of the most beautiful sacred spaces in the city and a fittingly grand chapel for St. Joseph’s Preparatory School and University.ii

Note: Special thanks to Bill Avington, Bill Conners, Father George Bur S.J., James Hill Jr., Gus Keuny, Sandy MacMurtrie, and Richard Pagano for their invaluable assistance.

References:

[i] “8-Alarm Fire Wrecks St. Joseph’s Prep School,” The Evening Bulletin, January 31, 1966.

[ii] Golden Jubilee, 1888-1938, Church of the Gesu, Privately printed: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1938, pp. 14, 15, 30, 32, 111. Collection of St. Joseph’s Preparatory School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.