Academy of the Sacred Heart

Sacred Heart Academy is significant in the educational history of the Detroit area, Michigan's largest urban center which historically has had a large, multi-national, Catholic population served by a well-developed system of parish day schools as the only Catholic boarding school for girls. It taught grades K-12. The academy's Lake Shore and Main School buildings possess importance in the architectural history of Michigan as high quality works of nationally prominent Catholic architects William Schickel and Maginnis & Walsh. The Academy of the Sacred Heart was one of many similar institutions throughout the World established by the Religious of the Sacred Heart, which was founded in the wake of the French Revolution in 1800 by Ste. Madaleine Sophie Barat. The education of girls and young women to religious, intellectual, and moral lives as Christian women was the Order's chief goal. Mr. and Mrs. Antoine Beaubien, wealthy Detroit Catholics and members of one of the city's oldest families, sponsored the initial establishment of a convent and school in Detroit by the Religious of the Sacred Heart. The first convent/school opened in June, 1851. Larger quarters were acquired in 1854 and 1861. The Religious operated boarding and day schools. In 1867-68 Mother Superior Eugeni Desmarquest purchased the property on which the Academy of the Sacred Heart was later built. The plan was to establish a boarding school for girls that would be near Detroit but free of the city's congestion, unhealthy air, and corrupt influences. Sufficient land was obtained to establish a farm to provide fresh food. Before her transfer to the Order's headquarters in Albany, New York, Mother Superior Desmarquest laid out the grounds, planning pathways, orchards; formal gardens, etc. that were carried out in due course. The financial drain from purchase of the property kept the Order from establishing the real boarding school on the Grosse Pointe property until 1885. In that year the original convent/academy building was completed. Two years later the Religious of the Sacred Heart opened a school for St. Paul's Parish, whose property, on which the present fine church was subsequently built, adjoined their own. The Religious of the Sacred Heart continued to operate the Academy of the Sacred Heart until 1969. In January, 1969 the Order announced the closing of the school in the following June. By May, 1969, a committee of former students managed to form an organization to run the school, hire a headmaster, and make a down-payment on the property. In August, 1969, the Grosse Pointe Academy, a co-educational, nominally Catholic, day school, was established. The school, which considers itself a continuation of the old academy, has preserved the buildings and grounds with few alterations.

The former Academy of the Sacred Heart, now Grosse Pointe Academy, occupies a tree-shaded campus fronting on Lake Shore Drive and overlooking Lake St. Clair in Grosse Pointe Farms, a well-healed old suburb northeast of Detroit. The almost twenty-acre site, located about seven miles from downtown Detroit, is roughly rectangular, extending in its long dimension about 1400 feet back from the lake. The academy contains five contributing buildings, an early farmhouse dating from about 1855 and four large academy buildings built between 1885 and 1930. There are two non-contributing buildings, the present headmaster's house (1939) and a maintenance shed/garage. Directly adjacent to the campus on the southwest along Lake Shore Drive is St. Paul's Catholic Church, an imposing, cruciform, Gothic structure of stone built about 1900. Surrounding the academy is a prestigious residential neighborhood. The academy stands on nearly level ground that slopes only slowly downward Lake Shore Drive and the low bluff above Lake St. Clair. Majestic trees dominate the grounds, shading the broad lawns and lining the walks and driveways. Sixty-seven kinds of trees have been identified, including pear (a favorite of the French settlers), Japanese tamarack, Japanese cherry, copper beeches, Norway spruce and bald cypress. These exotic trees were gifts brought to the Convent by nuns who had taken vows of poverty and, upon moving to Grosse Pointe, brought a gift of a seedling from their old convent. Since the order was located in thirty-five countries, trees from all over the world were planted on the grounds. These trees supplemented both the native vegetation and the plantings instituted by Mother Superior Eugeni Desmarquest who left plans (in the Archives of the Academy) for formal gardens, grape arbors, vegetable plots and an apple orchard (since the convent was cloistered, the nuns needed to be self-sufficient and raise their own food). They continued to raise chickens until 1940. Mother Desmarquest also is said to have ordered the planting of a long double row of maples extending from the formal gardens to present-day Kercheval. Close to 100 of these trees planted in 1890 are still standing, forming what is still known today as the 'nuns' walk.' Recreational facilities, including tennis courts and playground areas, have replaced much of the formal gardens and old orchard.