an informal illustrated history of the school

  We invite readers to share their memories and anecdotes about the history of St. Saviour High. 

Nearing its 90^th anniversary,  St. Saviour High School has enriched the Park Slope area of Brooklyn for almost as long as the neighborhood has been in existence.  The end of the 19^th Century was transitional for Brooklyn.  No longer independent, no longer a conglomeration of smaller cities and towns,  now part of greater New York City,  growth was rapidly adding to the Catholic population requiring additional parishes to meet the needs of the Church.

The middle class Irish neighborhoods around Court Street and Atlantic Avenue were moving eastward, north and south, into Fort Green, Bedford, and Park Slope.  Italians immigrants added to the Catholic population, and German and Austrian Catholics were expanding from Williamsburgh, Greenpoint, and Bushwick where they had lived since before the Civil War. 

Father Flood with Early Graduating Class

     On October 8th, 1905 Bishop McDonnell informed Father James J. Flood, lately from St. Agnes, Rockville Centre,  that he had been selected to form a new parish on the Hill section of the Slope, a neighborhood known as Brooklyn’s “Gold Coast” because of the many elegant residences.  With financial assistance of  James McMahon, president of the Emigrants Bank and a resident of the new parish, Father Flood was able to arrange the purchase  of land that included  the red brick mansion at Eighth Avenue and Seventh Street, and on December 21, 1905 he moved into the building, turning the first floor into a chapel.  On the morning of Sunday, Dec. 31st, the first mass in the new parish was offered. About 100 parishioners were present, and the entry in the parish book for that date notes that the first collection in St. Saviour’s amounted to $15.94.

     The parish grew quickly, and on February 1, 1906 ground was broken on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Sixth Street for the lower church. The work proceeded slowly.  The chapel in the red brick mansion was rapidly becoming inadequate. A census taken in February showed that, in the two months of its existence, the congregation had increased from 100 to 1,060 souls.  Father happily noted in his diary: : “the number attending mass on days of obligation averaged over 1,000 on each day. St. Saviour’s is a remarkable success.  Deo Gratias.”

Owing to the large number of children in the parish, the need for a school was becoming imperative. But finances made it impossible to build at that time. Instead, the old red brick mansion was transformed into a temporary convent and school for the parish. Sister Pauline of the order of St. Joseph was appointed to take charge of the school, known as St. Saviour’s Institute.  As Father Flood cryptically noted in the parish book in 1907: “The Institute was opened for business September 9th.” This original grammar school on Eighth Avenue, formerly the chapel, was thereafter fondly remembered for many years as “the little red schoolhouse”. 

Within two years after the founding of the parish the little red schoolhouse was open. Within another two years, in 1908,  a new school building was constructed on Sixth Street adjacent to the church to make room for a growing school age population. That “new” building became and still  is our St. Saviour High. In 1917 St. Saviour High School began classes on the top floor of the “new building”.  Many alum may remember graduating from grammar school and walking upstairs to high school. This arrangement remained until 1958, when all the elementary school children, save the seventh and the eighth grades, moved to a new facility on Eighth Avenue, the present very successful  St. Saviour’s School.  Then in the 1970's the entire Sixth Street building was fully occupied by the high school..

S.S.H.S. dance --circa 1920-- probably  first graduating class.

[Taken from re-print 1942 yearbook]

The St. Saviour Band, 1939.

The Saviour newspaper,  SALVATOR, 1939.

When St. Saviour High School “opened its doors to greet its first class”[1] in September 1917 it had been  just four months since America entered the First World War, an event hat also saw the beginnings of expanded roles for women in our nation..  Not coincidentally, the high school was founded as a response to the needs of female graduates of St. Saviour Grammar School. The boys of the parish went on to such high schools as the Jesuit run Brooklyn Prep, or Bishop Loughlin or St. Augustines staffed by the Christian Brothers. Girls had no comparable educational opportunity. Recognizing this need, Reverend James Flood, the founding pastor, invited the School Sisters of Notre Dame to open St. Saviour High School as a parish high school for girls.[2]  Sr. Mary Petra, S.S.N.D. was the first Principal of the high school.  The year the high school opened also was the year  the beautiful upper church was ready for its first masses.

St. Saviour has always enjoyed the intimacy of a small school while providing an exemplary education. Thus, the Graduating Class of June 1928 consisted of 23 girls.[3]  Miss Marie G. Carroll, A.B., a St. Saviour alumna, delivered the graduating address. This tradition lives on as the commencement addresses are to this day delivered by graduates who exemplify our fine traditions.

A few years later on a Wednesday morning, January 29, 1930,  15 girls of the January class were awarded St. Saviour diplomas by the pastor, Fr. William T. Conklin.  Miss Grace Hines was the valedictorian.  The girls were sent off into the larger world accompanied by vocal music, and a small orchestra.[4]

"Senior A", 1940

The Art Club, 1942

Hockey Team, 1943

In 1939, the first year of publication for the yearbook, Thabor,[5] St. Saviour graduated thirty-five young ladies in January, and thirty-six that June. The rigor of the studies may be surmised from the fact that the June class of thirty-five had started with fifty freshmen in 1935. Most of the girls came from Brooklyn, but some traveled from upper Manhattan, Queens Village, and Woodside.  The faculty consisted of eleven School Sisters of Notre Dame, and two lay women, who taught art and physical education. No pictures of the Sisters were in the yearbook, in fact not until the 1950's does Thabor include photographs of the semi-cloistered S.S.N.D. teachers.

The school has always had an active sports program.  During the 1940’s Saviour activities included many things out of style today, for instance, Ping Pong, Field Hockey, and Horse Back Riding,. easily done in neighboring Prospect Park with its  accessible stables and trails.  Girls sports have changed markedly since those years.

It was during the early 1940's and the Second World War that MacArthur first made his appearance--no, not the General--our MacArthur, known  to us as MacArthur Panda, the St. Saviour mascot.  We are told that  our MacArthur has been known to make a promise to return, also, after some lackluster sports' seasons.The cartoon from the 1943 Thabor illustrates the underlying tone during the war years.

St. Saviour has always opened the eyes of its students to the plight of the less fortunate and the causes of their champions.  We find Dorothy Day, famous Catholic Worker editor,  writing of  “sisters and students from St. Saviour high school” come to visit her at “Mary’s House”, a shelter for women at 115 Mott Street in Manhattan in January of 1945  to help clean up and render assistance. [6]

The 1952 Faculty consisted of eleven sister and four lay people—one, Angelo Consoli was unusual in that he was a he.  The dramatic society, “Encore” presented as one of their works a play entitled Life With Mother (known to a broader public as Life With Father by Clarence Day)..  Thabor editions reflect the time--during the Korean War, a prom date is seen in Marine Corp dress uniform, and a Woman Naval Officer is pictured among the snapshots.  The Cheerleaders uniform skirts go to the calf, and “Freshman Initiation” takes a whole page in Thabor.  The yearbook layout is influenced by LIFE magazine.  Sisters, in the original habits, are now in photographs.

The 1940 Ping Pong Team

Horseback Riding was a popular sport at St. Saviour in the 1940's and 1950's. (1952)

The 1942 Cheerleaders, and the debut of MacArthur  

School Dance, 1942

1952 School Dance -- Korean War era.

Classroom 1960, with sister in original habit.

Four Sisters from St. Saviour High and lower schools were the first School Sisters of Notre Dame to start S.S.N.D. missions in Africa in 1970, building a girls dormitory and later an auditorium in the West African bush of rural Liberia.  Since then other sisters have followed them, experiencing joy and extreme danger amid conflicts hard to imagine from 6^th Street and 8^th Avenue. Because of the Liberian Revolution the sisters had to leave in 1990; Sister Mary Peter Colantuoni, our present [2006] librarian, was among those who escaped the wars.

 But times change: over the years the proportion of Sisters to lay faculty in the school has reversed itself, so that today instead of lay faculty representing fifteen percent of the total as in 1939, lay faculty today comprise ninety percent of the total staff.  It speaks of St. Saviour’s tradition and spirit that St. Saviour alumnae have returned as over twenty percent of the faculty.

Student Counsel, 1966

1970 Christmas Dance

1979 Volleyball Team

Sr. Monica and colleague, 1971

 SALVATOR 1952 Thabor page

Freshman, 1966

1960 Senior Luncheon, Montauk Club

1988 Senior-Freshman 

Get-Together

2001 Father-Daughter Dance Sophomores

State Championship Basketball Team, 1988

Song Contest 1971

2001 National Honor Society Seniors

Msgr.Sharkey,Pastor,speaking with 1966 graduates

S.S.H.S., 1979 (the trees were not fully grown)

1990, Mrs. Bernstein supervises flower power

Graduation, 1970

Brooklyn-Queens Basketball Team, 1979

November1999 Senior Retreat  

Models, Mother Daughter Luncheon, 2004

Undergrads, 1970

The Window Wave from the students of 1970, years before and after.

Dr. Lane and members of the French Club, 1990