The Closed High Schools — Central Catholic, South Bend Catholic, and the 1953 Consolidation

1934–1953 — the brothers’ high school and the Polish high school, folded with the Academy into Saint Joseph High School

Central Catholic: The Brothers of Holy Cross opened Central Catholic High School in September 1934 on the second floor of St. Matthew School, with eighteen students and two brothers. It grew to six brothers and one lay teacher — the layman coaching football, basketball and wrestling — with Notre Dame priests and professors teaching some classes, and it reached a peak of 237 boys, all from St. Matthew Cathedral’s own history, which the diocesan paper’s centennial account confirms. Its team name, the Indians, passed at the consolidation to the new Saint Joseph High School, which carries it still. The seam in its record is printed, not smoothed: the parish history and the centennial account both carry the school as open until 1951, while the consolidation it fed is framed everywhere in the record as the merger of 1953 — the school closed in 1951, and the consolidated Saint Joseph High School opened in 1953, and both dates stand.

South Bend Catholic: The city’s other Catholic high school stood across town in the Polish parishes, and the Notre Dame Archives’ yearbook collection carries its record in the names the school itself used: South Bend Catholic Central High School, whose yearbook The Trail survives for 1938–1943 and 1946–1951, and South Bend Catholic High School, whose yearbook Victorian survives for 1940–1943. The same collection holds a brief history of the school written in Polish, titled “Wyzsza Szkola Polska” — the Polish High School — probably of the 1930s: the school’s Polish character is documented in its own archive at that strength. It had absorbed St. Hedwig’s parish high school before the consolidation, and in 1953 it closed into the same merger as the Academy and Central Catholic.

The consolidation: What replaced three schools with one is the web’s central event of the twentieth century, and its product stands in the next entry. The three schools the record names in the merger — Central Catholic, Saint Joseph’s Academy and South Bend Catholic — between them held the city’s Catholic boys, its Catholic girls, and its Polish parishes’ secondary pupils; from the fall of 1953 all of them were Saint Joseph’s.

Sources:

1. St. Matthew Cathedral parish, the parish’s own published history — Central Catholic’s September 1934 opening with eighteen students and two brothers, its growth to six brothers and one lay teacher, its peak of 237 boys, and its course to 1951.
2. Today’s Catholic, the St. Matthew centennial account — Central Catholic remaining open until 1951; Brother Aidan’s Extracts carrying the 1934 notice, “Holy Cross accepts two new schools,” in the Associate, 4:4.
3. University of Notre Dame Archives, ArchivesSpace, High School Yearbooks Collection (repositories/2/resources/541) — The Trail, South Bend Catholic Central High School, 1938–1943 and 1946–1951; Victorian, South Bend Catholic High School, 1940–1943; and the Polish brief history “Wyzsza Szkola Polska.”
4. Saint Joseph High School, the school’s own published history — the Indians name carried from Central Catholic, and the 1953 consolidation.