Page 8 - CBA 1975 YEARBOOK

HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN BROTHERS IN SYRACUSE
(The following history is adapted from a series of articles that appeared in the CATHOLIC SUN in 1959, during the
drive to raise money to build the present CBA. A special thanks to Brother Francis Johnson, who has saved the articles over the years.)
First A ppearance of Brothers in Syracuse
In 1867, Rev. John O’Hara, Pastor of St. Mary's Church, wished to open a home for orphan boys. He bought a
recently closed city-run poorhouse in the Town of Geddes, on Split Rock Road (now Grand Ave.), about a mile outside city limits.
Father O'Hara encountered some difficulties in establishing the orphanage. First, the Sisters of Charity, who were running St. Vincent's girls orphanage in the city, were neither prepared nor permitted to take charge of boys' institu­ tions. Second, the main building in Geddes, a substantial four-story brick structure on seventy acres of land, was far too large for the needs of the few orphan boys waiting for care. \
To solve these problems, Father O'Hara decided to ask the Christian Brothers to take charge of the institution. They could use the building for a pay school, with boarders and day scholars, as well as for an orphanage. The Brothers agreed, and in 1867, the first community, consisting of six Brothers, arrived in Syracuse.
News of a Brothers' school in Geddes soon attracted many scholars. Though the school was located some distance out- of-town, nearly one hundred day pupils arrived, while about the same number of boarders came from the surrounding country. Their ages were twelve to twenty-one years and older.
The Orphanage department formed only a small part of the institution. There were only about twenty-five orphan boys at Geddes, who attended the same classes as the pay school boys, with a small subsidy from the county treasury.
Father Guerdet, pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church, admired the Brothers' work, and invited them to teach in ' his small, newly erected parish school on Lock St. (now State St.). So in 1869, four Brothers began to come in daily from Geddes to teach at St. John's - a long and difficult journey in those days.
The next year the Brothers withdrew from the Geddes institution. There is no record of the actual circumstances, but most likely financial difficulties convinced the Brothers that their school-orphanage was no longer practical. The orphans were temporarily transferred elsewhere.
The Sisters of Charity later took over the building as an old age home and boys' asylum, which they renamed the House of Providence. The building was completly destroyed by fire on December 8, 1888, and only the cellar and foundations remain to mark the location of the Brothers' first school. (A new, larger House of Providence was later built a quaner mile away to replace the destroyed building.)
With the closing of the school in Geddes came an expansion of the one at St. John's. A community of six Brothers was formed at St. John's, and in 1870 Father Guerdet built a residence for them next to the church on State St. (Now the St. I John's Parish Center).
The West-Shore Railroad in 1882 obtained a right-of-way through Syracuse, and the Brothers' school stood in the way of the proposed tracks. So Rev. Thomas Reilly, who succeeded Father Guerdet as pastor of St. John's, sold the school property, immediately building a new, larger parochial school at the corner of State and Hickory Streets, to which pupils and teachers were soon transferred.
Syracuse was established as a diocese on May 1,1887; the Rt.Rev. Patrick A. Ludden was consecrated first Bishop. He selected St. John's as his cathedral, andnamed Msgr.J.F .M . Lynch its rector. In the same year, St. John the Evangelist school was charted as an academy by the Regents.
Msgr. Lynch began to express the need to reduce the parish debt. To accomplish this reduction, he and his trustees decided to dispense with the services of the Brothers, and to turn their pupils over to the Sisters. He notified the Brothers
that their services would not be required after the vacation of 1891. So the Brothers left Syracuse, to the great regret not ^ only of their pupils, but of the many friends thay had made since their arrival in 1867. ;
The Return of the Brothers ' But the absence of the Brothers was to last only nine years. During this tim e, Rev. Michael Clune, successor to Father
Lynch, tried diligently to find a way to bring the Brothers back to Syracuse. ' In 1900, Father Clune asked Brother Joseph, the provincial, to assign two Brothers to St. John the Evangelist school,
but his request was rejected, since it is rare for less than four Brothers to be assigned to a particular community. But he
continued to write Brother Joseph, and eventually persuaded him to agree to this plan: the Brothers would buy a house owned by Father Clune on the corner of Willow and State Streets. If they desired, the Brothers could later build their own academy on this site. The eventual fulfillment of this plan is a tribute to the vision of Father Clune and the Brothers who saw it through.
It was on the evening of August 31, 1900, that a reception was held in the three-story house located on the site. Between five and six hundred people, representing nearly all the parishes of the city, came to welcome the return of the Brothers and to celebrate the opening of the new school, to be known as Christian Brothers Academy. All present admired the convenient location of the site, the compact but neat and comfortable building with its four classrooms, community room, parlor and
Continued on page 159
_ |