St. Catherine’s High School and Convent
The more I read about Racine history, the more I’m interested in the St. Catherine’s convent which was originally built “off in the woods”, many blocks away from the main part of downtown.
I grew up very near to where the convent used to be, but for most of the time I lived in Racine, I knew the location as the practice football field for the St. Cat’s high school football team. I can remember how sad people were in the neighborhood when the convent was torn down in 1972, and how the adults talked about when the wrecking ball started the demolition by knocking the bell tower down.
St. Catherine’s Academy
However, I didn’t really get interested in the convent and academy until I found a copy of the book Rooted in Hope: The Story of the Dominican Sisters of Racine, Wisconsin. This book is by Sister Mary Hortense Kohler, O.P., and starts at the very beginning of the founding of the Dominican convent in the 1860s. Most of the story has to do with what was going on within the walls, but also offers wonderful glimpses of Racine life in the 19th century. I liked the passage when the author talks about the nuns taking the girl students from the convent school out for a walk past the boy students at Racine College (Dekoven Foundation). The convent also took in orphans and abandoned children.
Rooted in Hope
The book is well worth two readings. It’s a little dense with religious asides for the layman, but the history is there — the kind that’s fascinating and makes you think about particular episodes for days afterwards.
Here is Sister Mary Hortense Kohler’s masters thesis which led to the book: kohle_m_1936
Rectory on same block as St. Catherine’s Convent
Rectory on same block as St. Catherine’s Convent
1887 St. Catherine’s Female Academy
Politeness, 1913, by the Dominican Sisters
Beautiful excerpt from Rooted In Hope from a student’s point of view.
Barbara Ann: Took piano lessons in the convent one summer…took the city bus. I remember walking into the foyer, up @ 12 steps, slightly dark inside, cool, and smelled clean, like starch. On the landing, look to the left, and right, long hallways, with creaky hard wood floors, many rooms. I don’t recall really what was in front of me. The room I took lessons was down the hall, right of the landing. The door I entered was on the west side of the building. I imagine the east side was nice and sunny in the morning, I was on the west side.
My sister-in-law is a Dominican Sister and lived for a while in the Rectory with a few other Sisters…..What a building….
What a shame that convent was torn down.
I agree!
I’m in the process of composing a life profile of Rev Fr John M Bach – born in 1865 and spent the last 10+ years of life as Pastor at St Catherine’s Convent. I appreciate this article and reference information on its history to supplement my biography on rev Bach. I’ve been putting together historical profiles of the earliest clerics in Wisconsin and this on is more complex than most. Any assistance with Rev Bach’s involvement with St Catherine’s would be appreciated and
added to his story..
Greetings
My Mom attended the convent from around 1949-1954, give or take. Is there any place I can get info about her time there? She has just passed and never spoke to me about it. I am her son and found some old pictures…
Thanks for your help!
Dominic
XL
The aerial photo of the high school and the convent is amazing, especially because it shows, on the northwest corner of Park and 13th, the building where the Sisters gave piano lessons. I walked up to this building every Saturday afternoon for five or six years in the 1950s for my lessons, and remember the inside just as Barbara Ann (one of the writers, above) describes it.
At the end of the hallway, to the left, was a large, light-filled waiting room, and on the east side of the room was a huge mural — must have been seven feet wide and six feet tall, even accounting for how much bigger things seemed when we were small ourselves. The mural was a highly detailed Swiss-type mountain scene, with little villages, pastures, goatherds and their flocks, lakes, forests, trains going in and out of tunnels. Wending its way back and forth across the mural and culminating at the summit was a footpath on which all students had their own marker. As we progressed through our studies our markers would get advanced a titch. Every time we arrived for lesson we had to first check the mural to see whether the invisible Dominican hand had granted us advancement during the preceding week.
I would so dearly wish to see a photo of this mural!