ST. LOUIS — A city board took steps Monday toward designating Rosati-Kain High School as a city landmark and making it eligible for a nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, a move welcomed by the group of alumnae trying to keep the school open as an independent academy.
The Catholic all-girls high school that opened in 1911 has since 1922 operated out of a three-story, classical building at 4389 Lindell Blvd. in the Central West End. The St. Louis Archdiocese last month confirmed it planned to close Rosati-Kain at the end of the current school year. It also said it would close St. Mary's High School in Dutchtown as part of a consolidation plan.
A newly formed organization of alumnae called Rosati-Kain Forever is looking into taking over the school and continuing to run it as an independent school called Rosati-Kain Academy, pending the blessing of the Archdiocese, which owns the property, said Cynthia Goudy, president of the organization, at a Monday meeting of the St. Louis Preservation Board.
Goudy’s presentation to the board focused on the school's social justice history. She said it was the first to see two separate orders of nuns, Rosati and Kain, merge into one, and was also the first school in the city of St. Louis to racially integrate.
Robin Ransom, the first Black female member of the Missouri Supreme Court, graduated from Rosati-Kain, said Goudy, a 2003 alum of the school.
“We have prominent alums who go out into the community and change the world. And so to think that there was going to be no Rosati-Kain, and there were going to be no Rosati-Kain graduates … leaves a very large hole in the social justice space,” Goudy said.
The Rosati-Kain building opened in the 1920s and was designed by architect Henry Hess, which Goudy said should qualify the three-story, classical building as historic. She noted that it’s surrounded by other city landmarks, including the Cathedral Basilica, the Chase Park Plaza hotel, Forest Park and the St. Louis Art Museum.
The Preservation Board voted for city staff to prepare a petition in favor of listing the high school building as a city landmark, although final approval of that step would have to be given by the Planning Commission and Board of Aldermen, said Richard Callow, chair of the Preservation Board.
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