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Parish History
Photo Album
The Apse Windows
The Bell Tower
The Organ
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History of the
Church of The Immaculate Conception
The Age of Churches
Page 4 of 6
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Rev.
Sheridan |
The official
church-school of 1884, no longer need, was demolished, and the lot
sold to Charles F. and Emma B. Mays in April of 1925. Mr. Mays had
the former E. Tyson Ware dwelling moved off the convent lot to the
former church property at 108 Ware Avenue. In 1969, Mays sold the
house to David Lee Brooks, the Buick dealer. Almost one hundred
years later, the old site serves the area as a parking lot, while
the new church rises majestically nearby, continuing an unbroken
tradition of ministry to the parish.
The reverend Philip Sheridan, a seminary
professor and Assistant at Saint Paul’s Church, Caroline and Oliver
Streets, Baltimore, succeeded Father O’Keefe as pastor on February
11, 1906. The parish now numbered 800 parishioners and its 146
school pupils. The church had cost $200,000, of which $30,000
remained to be paid. The residual debt and future school expediters
were to burden future pastors for the next five decades.
Chapter Two
A rectory was completed in 1908 at a cost of
$32,500.
1 Father
Sheridan’s plans for a masonry elementary school and a high school
were delayed due to finances until after World War I. Nevertheless,
prior to and during the war years, the parish established a Sodality
(1911), the Parish Debt Society (1916) and the Holy Name Society
(1917). In 1916, the parish welcomed a new assistant, the Reverend
James G. O’Neill, a native of Pikesville.
A tract on Ware Avenue with a gable-peaked house
was purchased in 1921, but the house was soon moved to make way for
the brick convent to house fifteen Sisters, completed in 1924.
2 School construction had also
commenced in 1921, and by the date of Father Sheridan’s Silver
Jubilee, November 5, 1922, the school was ready for dedication by
the newly appointed Archbishop Michael J. Curley.
3
Finally opened on September 11 and solemnly
dedicated on November 23, 1923, the three-story building of
ornamental white hydraulic brick trimmed with Green River limestone
was indeed a fine building, "in conformity to the beauty of the
church." Internally supported by a steel frame, the school had
firewalls separating the main stairway from the body of the building
and housed eleven classrooms, science laboratories, rooms for
domestic science, music and typing, a library and 700-seat
auditorium that doubled as a gymnasium.
4 The school was so large, in
fact, that the Sisters of Notre Dame could not supply enough
teachers, and on August 18, 1926, the Sisters of Saint Francis of
Glen Riddle, Pennsylvania, assumed management and were still serving
the school in 1983.
5
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Solomn
dedication of the School of the Immaculate Conception, November
23, 1923 |
Father Sheridan intended to offer a fully
accredited high school program to serve the entire upper county.
Originally housed on the third floor of the elementary school, the
high school's first student body numbered thirty-eight. As a result,
grade school pupils, with typical literal-mindedness, insisted that
the high school was so called because of its location on the
school's highest floor! Students at Catholic Central High School,
the name chosen by the Archbishop for the new high school, could
elect a four-year academic courses program or a curriculum that
combined two years of academic course work with two years of
commercial studies. State certification was secured on December 6,
1926, and a Group One Rating was awarded in 1927 following an
inspection by the state superintendent of education. The combined
elementary-high school complex accommodated larger and larger
classes until overcrowding resulted, in 1928, in the construction of
a three-story addition, finished in 1929, increasing the parish debt
to $155,500.
The boom of the 20's was reflected in Towson
itself with an increasing number of new homes, and the growing
parish soon required additional Sunday Masses to accommodate the
congregation. By 1933, Father Sheridan's health had been seriously
undermined and he requested sick leave. Subsequently, he was
assigned to Saint Mark's Church, Catonsville, serving until his
death on January 13, 1948. 6
And so, at the age of forty-five, Father James O'Neill, who had
served as assistant at Immaculate Conception Church since his
ordination in 1916, became administrator of the parish, and on June
9, 1936, was appointed pastor.
The new pastor never mentioned money to his
parishioners. As he wrote in a pastoral letter, his parishioners
knew they "could attend Mass and
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View of
the early school |
say your prayers without undue annoyance."
7 Yet church members and even the school children "chipped
away" at the debt all through the depression years of the 30's,
employing as "money makers" such events as card parties, weekly
bingo games (with bus service provided!), the Dollar-A-Month Club,
and most effective of all, the operetta. The high school had
presented Peg o' My Heart in 1932, but the first of an unbroken
series of annual operettas was H.M.S. Pinafore in April, 1937.8
Father O'Neill, who had studied theatrical production and was also a
talented carpenter, even painted scenery for the musical
extravaganzas. The painted thermometer of debt in the church
vestibule showed the total sinking dramatically, until in November,
1946, the parish was debt-free.9
Each year Archbishop Curley congratulated Father O'Neill on the
progress made in reducing the debt, noting in 1943 ... "Your people
are really generous. Your income was magnificent compared to what we
get in the city from the same number of people."
10
The school continued to grow during the 30's and
Sister Zachariah assumed responsibility as principal upon the death
of Sister Corintha in 1933. At first, the parish operated a
horse-drawn omnibus and later a fleet of squarish, first-generation
motor busses to transport pupils to school, but Father O'Neill
helped inspire legislation allowing students living at a
considerable distance from the school to ride the public school
busses. By the early 1940's, a full-time coach was hired and an
athletic field developed next to the cemetery. While constructing
the field, Father O'Neill enlarged the parking area north of the
church to four lanes by dumping seemingly endless truckloads of
earth over the original precipice.
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