Holy Cross leaving Da Ninth...

Holy Cross High School is leaving the Ninth Ward campus they've called home since 1879. The school took about 7' of water, and will re-open at their current campus in January. The boys will use modular classroom buildings to finish out the year.

This is no big surprise. As the article in Da Paper mentions, Holy Cross is the last boys Catholic high school to be operating at its original 19th century location. Jesuit left the CBD for Mid-City in the 1930s. St. Aloysius left Esplanade and N. Rampart in 1969 and merged with Cor Jesu to become Brother Martin High, located at Cor Jesu's campus on Elysian Fields in Gentilly. Redemptorist High left the Irish Channel in 1980. The Redemptorists closed the school on Constance and Josephine and the School Sisters of Notre Dame (who staffed the school along with the priests) re-opened it as Redeemer High in Gentilly, at the campus of the then-closed St. Joseph Academy.

Holy Cross hasn't drawn many students from the Ninth Ward for twenty years now. They relied on a good bus system from Metairie/Kenner and on students from St. Bernard Parish to get kids to the campus. Katrina was the last nail in the campus' coffin, because it wiped out Arabi and Chalmette. It's a shame, but hopefully the old campus can be redeveloped into a useful property for the community.

My best to the Holy Cross community. I've got good friends who went to HC, and we Brother Martin kids pretty much got along with the HC guys, quite unlike the bad blood between Brother Martin and that place on Carrollton and Banks...

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