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ST. AUGUSTINE’S SEMINARY

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1923. Ulman Ave. at Seminary Dr.

The first Catholic seminary for African Americans opened as Sacred Heart College in Greenville in 1920, but facing opposition it moved here in 1923 and was renamed St. Augustine’s Seminary. The original building (1922–1923, Hermann Gaul) was demolished in 1987. The adjacent brick Italian Romanesque Revival chapel (1936, R. C. Springer) with its red tile roof remains the most prominent structure on the campus. A winding arcade, added later, leads to a detached prayer chapel. Nearby is the grotto ( pictured), begun in 1938 by Brother Paul Tanner. In 1947, Thaddeaus S. Boucree of New Orleans significantly expanded it, reusing broken seashell-caked concrete from the seawall, which had been destroyed in that year’s hurricane. Following desegregation in the 1960s, the seminary campus became a retreat center and retirement home for the Society of the Divine Word and Brothers of the Southern Province.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Jennifer V.O. Baughn and Michael W. Fazio with Mary Warren Miller
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Data

What's Nearby

LOUIS J. PIERNAS HOUSE
HANCOCK COUNTY COURTHOUSE
ST. ROSE DE LIMA CATHOLIC CHURCH
HOUSES ON NORTH BEACH BOULEVARD
100 MEN D.B.A. HALL

Citation

Jennifer V.O. Baughn and Michael W. Fazio with Mary Warren Miller, "ST. AUGUSTINE’S SEMINARY", [Bay St. Louis, Mississippi], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MS-02-GC10.

Print Source

Buildings of Mississippi, Jennifer V. O. Baughn and Michael W. Fazio. With Mary Warren Miller. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2021, 338-339.

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