
Established in Georgia in 1874 to help freed slaves, this community of the Benedictine Order first moved from the Isle of Hope to Skidaway Island and then to a block on Habersham Street between 31st and 32nd streets in 1880, where it built a church, an orphanage for African American children, and a school. Pressured by development in that neighborhood, the community’s members moved again to establish the Sacred Heart Church and a high school for boys on a full block of Bull Street, set on land donated by Mother Mathilda Beasley, Georgia’s first black nun, who lived out her last years in a cottage near this building. A late and subdued expression of High Victorian Gothic, the church was constructed of red pressed brick with white Georgia marble trim, and has twin spires and a red tile roof. The adjacent Notre Dame Academy was the first home of the Benedictine Military School (1904; 2001–2002 restoration, Gunn Meyerhoff Shay Architects), which moved to its remarkable modernist campus (20.10) in 1963. Attached to the rear of its earlier building is a Gothic Revival auditorium and armory (1924) by Levy, Clarke and Bergen, which is reminiscent of West Point in New York.