THE PHILADELPHIA STORY

FOR MORE THAN 150 YEARS, A PHILADELPHIA BLOCK HAS BEEN A HUB OF JESUIT ACTIVITY

By John LaMartina, SJ

The neighborhood of North Philadelphia has been through a lot in the past 150 years. As with many older, East Coast cities, economic, cultural and population shifts have altered the urban landscape.  But in North Philly, one thing has remained the same: a square block of land that continues to be a Jesuit stronghold, home to places that, over the years, have educated young minds and renewed souls.     

Today, the area bounded by 17th Street, Thompson Street, Girard Avenue and 18th Street is home to the Gesu Church, St. Joseph’s Preparatory School, the Gesu School and the former Jesuit residence, soon to be renovated and part of the Prep. The original plan, however, called for a Jesuit college to be built there.

On January 29, 1852, the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania granted a charter of incorporation to St. Joseph’s College, founded in 1851 by Fr. Felix Barbelin, SJ. The school was located in an extension of the Jesuit residence of St. Joseph’s Church, on Willing’s Alley in Philadelphia.  In 1856, needing room to expand, St. Joseph’s College moved to a renovated building at the corner of Juniper and Filbert streets. Just four years later, however, due to debt and declining enrollment, classes transferred back to the Willing’s Alley site, where the high school department continued but the college department closed. 

Realizing a more suitable location was needed for the school to grow, Barbelin, now pastor of St. Joseph’s Church and St. Joseph’s College, purchased in 1866, an entire city block between 17th and 18th streets and Stiles and Thompson streets, for the purpose of eventually erecting a college building. This site, three miles northwest of Willing’s Alley, was in the suburbs but also close to the center of the city. The area was sparsely settled, but there was good reason to believe that it would soon be filled with homes and streets.

Entrusted with the work of establishing a new college on this site was Fr. Burchard Villiger, SJ.  Born in Switzerland in 1819, Villiger joined the Society of Jesus there in 1838.  He was sent to America and arrived at Georgetown College in 1848, where he was ordained in 1850. Villiger had become known as a financial and organizational genius, due to much previous administrative experience, particularly his work rebuilding the struggling Santa Clara College in California. 

Villiger began his task of building a new St. Joseph’s College by erecting a temporary church on the corner of 17th and Stiles streets, called the new St. Joseph’s Church. On December 6, 1868, the church opened for service and a new parish, later called the Gesu (The Holy Name of Jesus), came into existence.  Four years later, the structure was renamed the Church of the Holy Family to distinguish it from the church at Willings Alley, which had acquired the name, “Old” St. Joseph’s Church and is still an active parish today. Since Villiger intended this church for temporary use, its foundation was laid and its walls were constructed in such a way that it could easily be transformed—with slight alterations—from a church into a college building. It had a frontage of 60 feet facing 17th Street and extended 104 feet along Stiles Street. Adjoining it, a three-story residence for the Jesuit priests and brothers was built, with the same goal of ultimately converting it into part of a future college. 

When the Church of the Holy Family was completed in 1868, the neighborhood was growing rapidly and in three years, the parish congregation numbered some 2,000 Catholics. Upon the completion of the parish school building, ground was broken and work begun on the construction of the massive Church of the Gesu on the corner of 18th and Stiles streets on March 10, 1879.  The cornerstone was laid on October 5.  Foundations 12- to 14-feet-thick supported the enormous arch, which was to span the nave of the building. Although Villiger constantly gave lectures and held fairs, concerts and excursions to finance construction, work was slow in the beginning due to lack of funds. In 1885, however, with the help of a gift of $72,000 from the will of banker and financier Francis A. Drexel, whose daughter Katharine was later canonized a saint, work progressed more rapidly.  It took more than nine years to complete the Gesu Church, which is almost as large as the Cathedral Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia and was often referred to as the “cathedral” church. Its formal dedication took place on December 2, 1888.

Now that the new Gesu church was completed, the old church building of the Holy Family was available for college purposes. After renovations, the new St. Joseph’s College opened on September 1, 1889, on Stiles Street. With the financial support of the parish the school provided a free education from first grade through college; that changed in 1902 when enrollment grew to more than 300 students and increase of the debt for the construction and renovation of buildings made it necessary to begin charging tuition.   

The Church of the Gesu has been described as a magnificent edifice of red pressed brick, a substitute for the first choice of stone, which was much more expensive. Its cost was more than $440,000, which today would total about $25 million.  The exterior and interior of the church are in Baroque Revival style and partly modeled after the Jesuit Church of the Gesu in Rome. It has a frontage of 122 feet on Stiles Street and a length of 252 1/2 feet on 18th Street. The interior is an open space with no columns, the roof resting on the sidewalls, 10 feet thick, and the walls separating the side chapels. The highest point of the arch above the center aisle is 100 feet. It has eight side chapels, and the height of its two towers, which were never fully completed, is over 200 feet. The interior of the church was painted white when it was completed in 1888 and remained so for 30 years until it was renovated, decorated and repainted under the artistic skill of Br. Francis C. Schroen, SJ.   

The Gesu parish benefited immensely from the industrial growth of Philadelphia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1900, the Gesu served as many as 20,000 Catholics in North Philadelphia, of whom about 80 percent were of the working lower middle class who generously supported the church and the school. In 1898, ground was broken for another new college building that was to extend west along Stiles to 17th Street and along 17th to within 60 feet of Thompson Street. While this was being built, the old portion on Stiles Street—the college building on the site of the Church of the Holy Family—was again renovated. In 1912, a new faculty residence on Thompson Street was completed. The old Jesuit residence adjoining the school on Stiles Street then underwent renovation for classrooms, a sodality chapel, assembly halls and a gymnasium. In 1923, a new building for the crowded prep school, named Villiger Hall, was finished on Thompson Street, extending from 17th Street to the residence and thus completing the quadrangle purchased by Father Barbelin in 1866.

The Gesu parish flourished for several decades following the turn of the century until about the time of the Great Depression. By the 1960s, many established Catholic families had moved away and homes were abandoned. The Gesu parish diminished in size to just a few hundred families. The College Department remained on 17th and Stiles streets until 1927, when it was moved to the Gothic buildings on 54th and City Line Avenue. The Prep School remained at the old site and continued to attract students from various parts of Philadelphia and New Jersey. In January 1966, however, a fire destroyed a large portion of the building on 17th and Stiles, which had been taken over by the Prep when the college moved. During the period of construction, Prep students attended classes in the Villiger Hall until the completion of a modern new school building on Girard Avenue, adjoining the old site in January 1969.

By the 1980s, the Gesu parish was struggling to support itself and in 1993, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia closed the Gesu parish and two neighboring parishes. The Gesu school, pre-K through eighth grade, now located in the old Villiger Hall on Thompson Street, remains open under the administration of the Jesuits and the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who have taught in the school for more a than a century. With a predominantly African-American student body, the Gesu school now serves low-income families in the north Philadelphia area.

The Church of the Gesu underwent some renovations recently, but is no longer a parish. It remains on its original site now under administration of St. Joseph’s Preparatory School and still serves as a chapel for the students of the Prep and of the Gesu School.

John LaMartina, SJ, is the resident archivist for the Maryland Province Jesuits.

Related Links

St. Joseph's University
Old St. Joseph's Church
St. Joseph's Prep
Gesu School