Pages
Links
-
Recent Posts
- A Titanic Love Affair
- The Musical Million: The Ruebush-Kieffer Company, Singing Schools, and the Birth of Southern Gospel
- From Virginia Chronicle, One Century Ago: Three Dailies & Four Weeklies Report the End of the Great War
- Carpetbagger or Reformer?
- A Talent at the Starting Gate: Nell Blaine and the Monocle
Archives
Editors
Categories
Tag Archives: St. Patrick’s School
St. Patrick’s Patrician
In 2017, a generous patron of the Library of Virginia donated several issues of the Patrician, the student newspaper of Richmond’s St. Patrick’s School. The issues added to the Library’s collection, published from 1946 to 1955, provide a glimpse of post-war life in Richmond through the lens of young writers. The papers also offer a unique historical record of one of Richmond’s treasured and bygone institutions, St. Patrick’s School.
On September 3, 1866, only a little over a year after the Civil War’s end, St. Patrick’s Female Academy opened its doors in Richmond’s Church Hill neighborhood. In a Daily Dispatch article, “Catholic Schools on Church Hill,” published November 12, 1866, the Dispatch reported three Catholic Schools in the area: the Academy of Visitation, the School of the Sisters of Charity and a school run by St. Patrick’s Church, which had seventy students. “At these schools,” it explained, “scholars who are unable to pay for tuition (whether they are Protestants or Catholics) are received free of pay.”
Initially St. Patrick’s was located in the 100 block of North 25th Street, but in 1914 James Fox & Son constructed a larger school and adjacent housing for the sisters at 26th and Grace Streets. Designed by distinguished Richmond architect Marcellus Eugene Wright, Sr., the Times Dispatch described the new St. Patrick’s Academy as “one of the most modern [buildings] in the city.” Wright designed several buildings of note in Virginia, including the Chamberlin Hotel in Hampton, the George Washington Hotel in Winchester, and the Hotel John Marshall, William Byrd Hotel and Altria (formerly the Mosque) Theatre in Richmond.

St. Patrick’s School, designed by Marcellus E. Wright, Sr. Photo by Clement Britt.
http://www.richmond.com/realestate/features/richmond-neighborhoods/st-patrick-s-place-how-a-historic-building-went-from/article_e7640a28-2c2b-11e7-9f9c-9b824c6429bb.html
In 1922, St. … read more »