Saint Mary's School

In 1870 Father Camillius Maes of Saint Peter Parish erected Saint Mary's School on a lot adjacent to the church, and when its grammar school opened that year it became the first Catholic school in the city and in Macomb County. Three nuns from the Immaculate Heart of Mary Convent in Monroe taught its first eighty students in a two-room, two-story wooden building, with boys in one room and girls in the other, receiving instruction in basic elementary subjects and church doctrine. By 1882 annual enrollment had reached about 170 students, the first graduating class, all girls, finished in 1885, and the boys had their first graduation in 1909. The sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary taught there until 1986, when lay teachers took over instruction. The original portion of the present Saint Mary's School opened in 1889 and was a square, towered, three-story Second Empire building with classrooms and offices on the first two floors and an auditorium on the third. Its third story burned in 1957 after a fire at Saint Peter's Church caused the steeple to fall onto the school roof, and only the third-floor auditorium was lost. The school's four distinct stages of construction reflected its growth to serve an increasing population, including a rear addition in 1903, a high school wing in 1911, and an addition to that wing in 1921.

Mount Clemens, Michigan · United States