The Motherhouse Buildings

1860–2026

Bertrand Hall, and its three costs. The motherhouse rose in stories. Bertrand Hall, built 1860–62, was the entire school in one five-story building of Notre Dame brick, designed by William Thomas of Chicago and built under Fathers Patrick Dillon and Edward Sorin; it housed up to sixty boarders and was outgrown on completion. Its cost stands in the archives at three figures, all printed, none chosen: $24,000 in the congregation's chronology, $16,993.87 in the building projects list, and $60,000 in Sister Maria Teresa Heineman's list. Bertrand Annex — the Music Hall of 1864–65, Second Empire in style — followed, and Lourdes Hall in 1871–72, the Brothers of Holy Cross serving as architects and builders. Bertrand Hall served the preschool and preparatory departments until 1945, a House of Studies from 1949, a postulate from 1961, and from 1968 the congregation's administrative offices; it took the name Bertrand Hall in 1938, having begun as the Academy. All three halls passed to the college in the sale of 2021 told in the land article above.

The Tower Building and the novitiate. The Tower Building — the Administration or Center Building of 1888–89, Classical Revival, the Brothers again architects and builders — held the general administration, a convent, and the novitiate, and was enlarged for them in 1890–92. Father Sorin superintended its foundation and then, the building files record dryly, became dissatisfied and withdrew; Martin Hoban was its mason; its cost is carried at $25,000 — $25,413.67 in the projects list — and Moreau himself had brought its tower bell from France. Its first debt interest was paid from the Civil War nurses' salaries, as the nursing article above records. St. Angela Hall, dedicated 31 May 1892 to designs by Edbrooke and Burnham of Chicago at some $20,000, served lectures, concerts, and assemblies and later athletics; demolished in five days in 1975, it left its name to the Angela Athletic Facility of 1976–77, designed by Helmut Jahn of C.F. Murphy Associates, winner of an AIA Honor Award in 1979 and built, the record notes, solely for women. The Novitiate building of 1892–93 (Werst and Sons, $48,550.88) was renamed Augusta Hall in 1941 for Mother Augusta and opened to college students in 1969. The Sisters' Infirmary followed in 1897.

The Convent of 1954, and the cemetery of 1868. The congregation's modern house is the Convent of 1952–54, construction underway in 1952 and dedicated in May 1954 — a fireproof building that took the congregation's archives into its basement, where on 18 January 1964 a flood put four feet of water into the archives rooms and set eighteen months of restoration under National Archives guidelines. The Lillie O'Grady Center was added to the convent in 1970. Regina Hall, begun in the spring of 1963 and dedicated in 1964 for the postulate and House of Studies, was leased to the college in 1968 for student residence and houses its health education center today. Our Lady of Peace Cemetery was established on the ground in 1868; in the autumn of 1939 it was enclosed in iron fencing with a new south gate bearing its name, Mother Vincentia's gift for its proximity to the shrine, and in the summer of 1940 a Calvary group, the gift of Stella Hamilton Stapleton, was erected there. The sisters lie in it still, the Civil War nurses among them under their flags. In 2024 Bertrand and Lourdes halls stood among the last buildings vacated in the relocations preparing the Heritage and Research Center — the joint archives of ten congregations of women religious, founded at Saint Mary's in 2023 — which now keeps the congregation's records on the ground where they were made.

Sources

1. HARC, Archival Reference Guide — the building chronology, the projects list with its costs, and the building files for Bertrand Hall and Annex, Lourdes Hall, the Tower Building, St. Angela Hall, the Novitiate/Augusta Hall, the Infirmary, the Convent, Regina Hall, and Our Lady of Peace Cemetery; the archives' flood of 18 January 1964; the 2024 HARC relocations.
2. Sisters of the Holy Cross, "History" (cscsisters.org) — the Heritage and Research Center founded at Saint Mary's, 2023, by ten congregations of women religious.
3. Saint Mary's College news release, 17 March 2021 — the sale of Bertrand Hall, Bertrand Annex, and Lourdes Hall to the college.