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LEMONT – Members of the Archdiocese of Chicago and historical preservationists in Lemont are debating whether the original St. Patrick School on Illinois Street should be saved.
The archdiocese has filed a petition to demolish the building, which will be heard by the Lemont Historic Preservation Commission Thursday.
However, it is not debatable that the nearly 132-year-old building has a long history in Lemont.
“St. Patrick’s has always had a special place in my heart,” said Lemont Historical Museum coordinator Sue Donahue, who attended the school. “It’s almost like a second home.”
The school, initially called St. James Academy, was built in 1883 by St. Patrick Parish’s first pastor, Father James Hogan.
According to the parish, there are no written records on why the school was called St. James, although speculation is that it was named in honor of Hogan.
The building is a 50-by-60-foot, two-story structure built in an Italian style from Lemont quarry stone.
In the book “Lemont and It’s People,” by Sonia Kallick, Kallick said the back portion of the building contains stones from the first stone residence built in Lemont by Joel Wells.
St. James Academy was the first school in Lemont to offer secondary education, teaching students in grades one to 12.
According to Kallick’s book, Lemont public schools did not offer post eighth-grade education until 1887 and did not offer a full four-year program until the early 1900s.
By the 1900s, the academy became St. Patrick School and taught first grade through eighth grade.
Lemont Area Historical Society Vice President Rose Yates, who attended St. Patrick during the 1950s, said it was a typical old school, with four classrooms on the ground floor and two grades per room, separated by dividers.
As the number of students grew, classes started moving upstairs, she said.
“We had the best time, the best teachers,” she said. “I had nothing but fond memories of it.”
Donahue said, as the name St. Patrick would suggest, many of the students who went there were of Irish descent.
“You were identified by your name, so you went to a certain school because of your nationality,” she said.
The parish continued to hold classes in the school until 1962, when the students moved to a new building nearby on Cass Street. Classes were held in that building until 2003, when St. Alphonsus and St. Patrick combined their classes into one building.
Yates said that as much as outgrowing the building, safety concerns were the reason for moving out of the original building.
The pastor assigned to the parish in 1959, David Fullmer, was the principal investigator of the Our Lady of Angels School fire that killed 92 students and three nuns in 1958 in Chicago.
Yates said she believes the limited number of escapes routes from the second floor in case of a fire concerned him.
“I think in his mind, [moving the students] was more of a safety issue,” she said.
Even after the students moved out, the school and parish continued to use the building.
St. Patrick School held its library and some physical education classes there.
Donahue said the parish would host its Show of Shows fundraiser in the building and allowed rummage sales to take place there.
Yates said the church choir and youth ministry also would meet in the building.
However, she said the archdiocese closed the building 12 years ago after an inspection determined the roof of the building was failing.
The archdiocese said its best option is to demolish the building because the repair costs are too great.
Donahue said the parish and the community should have done more to keep the building from deteriorating to this point.
“Sometimes you get so used to seeing something being there, you kind of take it for granted,” she said. “I think people just assumed it would always be there.”