The Mary Louis Convent (Rose Crest)
86-44 Edgerton Boulevard | also 86-44 178th Street, 86-50 Edgerton Boulevard | Jamaica Estates | built 1930
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1932
Mother Mary Louis picks the Rose Crest hilltop for a girls' academy but dies months later
In early 1932, on a Long Island Rail Road trip, Mother Mary Louis, General Superior of the Sisters of St. Joseph, chose Rose Crest, the Fox/Adikes estate on a Jamaica Estates hilltop, as the place for an academy for young women. She died on May 22, 1932. The Passionist priests of the neighboring Immaculate Conception Monastery then bought the hilltop, planning a high school seminary for boys there.
“…traveling on the Long Island Rail Road in early 1932, Mother Mary Louis, the General Superior of the Sisters of St. Joseph, selected the hilltop…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1935
The Sisters of St. Joseph acquire Rose Crest and make the mansion their convent
Archbishop Thomas Molloy stepped in and talked the Passionists into selling the estate to the Sisters of St. Joseph for exactly the price they had paid. The sisters formally took over Rose Crest in 1935, and its white stucco Mediterranean Revival mansion became their convent.
“In 1935, the Sisters of St. Joseph officially acquired the Rose Crest estate, and the Mediterranean Revival white stucco mansion became the convent for the Sisters.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1936
The Mary Louis Academy holds its first classes in the mansion's parlor
Fifteen young women and a faculty of eight sisters began the first school day on September 14, 1936, meeting in the parlor of the mansion while the permanent academy building was still being planned. In the same period two wings were added to the house, one for a refectory and one for a Mission-style chapel.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2014
The academy takes over the old convent and remakes it with labs and a retreat wing
By 2011 the number of Sisters living in The Mary Louis Convent had dwindled, so those remaining moved to nearby convents and the building was handed to the academy. In summer 2014 the school renovated the former Rose Crest mansion, adding more than 12,500 square feet: a student lounge, art solarium, robotics and engineering lab, math lab, culinary arts center and an 11-bedroom overnight retreat facility. The original Mission-style chapel was brought back into use.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- The Mary Louis AcademyWikipedia
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