The Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes

1878 – 1896

Sorin's first grotto: Sorin visited the shrine at Lourdes, France, in 1873 and came home determined that Notre Dame should have its Grotto. A first replica — a wooden structure on a low rock wall beside the church — was built in the summer of 1878. It stood through Sorin's lifetime; he died October 31, 1893.

Corby's grotto: The present Grotto was the work of the Rev. William Corby — Sorin's successor in the congregation's American leadership and twice the university's president — in the spring and summer of 1896, funded by a gift of 2,500 dollars from the Rev. Thomas Carroll, a priest and alumnus. Local contractor John Gill built it of huge Indiana fieldstone boulders gathered from the university's farm and the farms around it; the work took about three months, surviving a collapse when a natural spring was struck during construction. The campus marker describes it as a replica at one-seventh the size of the Grotto of Massabielle at Lourdes. It was completed and dedicated on August 5, 1896 — the feast of Our Lady of the Snows in the marker's account. Its site carries the fire of 1879 inside it: the charred rubbish of the burned Main Building had been spread to fill the low ground west of the church, and the grotto builders dug into it.

The record corrected: Popular belief long gave the Grotto to Sorin himself. A December 1953 letter by the Rev. Joseph Maguire to the university archivist disputed a string of commonly held beliefs about the Grotto's history — its builder among them — and became, in the Archives' published history, the benchmark for the research that followed: the Grotto is Corby's work, three years after Sorin's death, built to fulfill Sorin's wish.

Sources:

1. Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes historical marker, Notre Dame (hmdb.org) — the 1896 construction; Corby and the Carroll benefaction; three months; fieldstone boulders; the one-seventh scale; the 1879 debris beneath the plaza.
2. University of Notre Dame Archives, "Notre Dame's Grotto" (www3.nd.edu) — Maguire's 1953 letter and its corrections; the 1878 wooden grotto; the site's history.
3. "Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, Notre Dame" — the spring 1896 start, contractor John Gill, the spring and the collapse, the August 5, 1896 completion and dedication.