About St. Mary
For seven years in the 1960s, what we think of as Judge Memorial was actually two companion schools – Judge Memorial for boys, St. Mary of the Wasatch for girls. The split occurred to prop up St. Mary’s, which was struggling with a small enrollment of girls, many of whom were boarding students, the daughters of mining magnates or ranching kingpins in rural Nevada, Wyoming and Idaho. There were also expectations that population growth in the Salt Lake Valley would include increasing numbers of Catholic out-of-staters who would overfill Judge’s building before long. The projected enrollment surge never materialized, at least not as much as forecast, and the move of the girls to St. Mary’s did not resolve that institution’s financial problems. Ultimately, St. Mary’s was closed, its expensive real estate was sold and the girls returned to Judge for the 1970-71 school year.
St. Mary’s history actually pre-dates Judge’s by nearly 50 years. According to documents in the school’s archives, Bishop Lawrence Scanlan invited the Sisters of the Holy Cross to run the Academy of St. Mary of the Assumption in 1875. The order accepted, and in June of that year, Mother Augusta and Sr. Raymond came from Indiana to the “mysterious and romantic” city of Salt Lake. Sr. Augusta had worked with Ulysses Grant during the Civil War, nursing wounded soldiers, and was up to the challenge. The two nuns drew up a plan to operate the school for $25,000 and “scoured mining camps in Utah” for the funding to support it. The sisters stayed at the home of Judge T. M. Marshall, a good friend of Bishop Scanlan although a non-Catholic. Marshall was an active Mason and the first non-Mormon elected to the Territorial Council. His daughter, Nannie, was the first pupil enrolled in St. Mary’s, which was initially housed in a “humble little adobe house” on the west side of 200 West midway between 100 South and 200 South in downtown Salt Lake City. When it opened in the fall of 1875, St. Mary’s had 100 students.
Bishop Scanlan’s successor, Bishop Glass, bought a 400-acre parcel near the mouth of Emigration Canyon in 1921 from the Salt Lake County Club, which had abandoned plans to build a golf course there. Ground was broken for the school in the spring of 1925, with construction completed a year later. Both a high school and a college began operations in the fall of 1926. Sr. Madaleva was sent from Notre Dame in Indiana to run the college. In an article written by Gael Wirth, a member of the college’s final graduating class in 1959, Sr. Madaleva was paraphrased as saying that seven of the best years of her life were spent at St. Mary’s, despite the building often being cold, water shortages, the presence of coyotes howling beneath windows and the predictable prospect of being snowed in once a winter. The building had four stories with three wings, the north and south wings angling west. A six-ton Angelus bell rang at noon and 6 p.m. Students had to stop and pray when the bell tolled. In the early years, nuns talked about red sand blowing through cracks around the doors and windows. Wirth remembered the wind blowing through hallways and shutting doors. The property had a reservoir and was piped for water, irrigating the expansive grounds which had wild rose bushes, huge pine trees and sloping lawns. The school even had its own canyon leading up into the foothills. There were also three outbuildings – a caretaker’s house, a gym and a social hall. The nuns were not allowed to drive and they always traveled in pairs. Educationally, most had doctorates. The nuns lived on the fourth floor, Wirth observed, and no student ever dared take the elevator there. The library had a second-story catwalk and an open atrium to the bell tower.
While beautiful, the facility had perpetual financial problems. Part of the property was sold to a real estate developer in 1957. The relief was short-lived. The college was declared insolvent in 1959 and closed. St. Mary’s continued to operate as a high school, with some space set aside as an infirmary for sick nuns. But the high school did not have enough students to support it financially and Judge was starting to feel growing pains. As early as April 27, 1956, then Bishop Hunt had been exhorting parents of high school-age girls to enroll them in St. Mary-of-the-Wasatch Academy because 100 freshmen were expected the next fall at Judge, threatening to overwhelm the school building’s capacity. “The possibility of Judge’s becoming an all-boy school in the next few years is not far fetched,” he said in a letter read from the pulpit of every parish in the Diocese during Sunday Mass. With 50 graduates entering from Judge Elementary School and another 50 from Cathedral, the Judge building “will be completely overwhelmed,” the bishop said. Fr. James Kenney, the superintendent of Catholic schools, said some applications to attend the high school in the 1955-56 school year were rejected, and that for this coming year, three metropolitan-area pastors would review new applications to see who was let in. By Aug. 17, the Diocese said it was turning away even Catholic kids because schools were too full. Besides Judge looking at 100 freshmen, the eighth-grade class at Cathedral was at capacity, as was its kindergarten. Open only through fourth grade up to then, St. Ann’s was adding fifth grade and kindergarten – and planned to add a class each year. A sixth grade was added at Bishop Glass, which had four Sisters of the Holy Cross and a lay teacher on the faculty. It would continue to add a grade each year, too.
Eventually, in the spring of 1963, a letter from Bishop Joseph Lennox Federal was read from the pulpit at all Masses at all parishes one Sunday, saying Judge would be all-boys starting with the 1963-64 school year. Some 300 girls left to attend St. Mary’s, leaving about 425 boys at Judge. “This move will give us accommodations for an additional 700 students without a new high school building,” Bishop Federal said. Space was needed because Judge received students from six Catholic grade schools and was expecting more with two additional elementary schools under construction. “More and better high school education for our youth,” Bishop Federal added, noting that the Salt Lake Diocese would have financial responsibility for both schools, operating them as twin institutions with the same tuition. “Co-curricular activities of each of the schools will be coordinated, Fr. Kenny pledged. “We want and desire the students of each of the schools to be associated.”
