Catholic Central High School

Father Frederic Baraga established the Mission of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the west side of the Grand River in 1833 and began Catholic education in Grand Rapids. During his seventeen months there, some thirty Odawa children and about a half-dozen Euro-American children attended the school. Father Andreas Viszoczky, Baraga’s replacement, maintained the small school. He renamed the parish after St. Andrew on August 11, 1850. Catholic education in the city grew slowly through the 1850s and 1860s. The congregation built St. Andrew’s Parish School in 1873. At the time, four other parish schools operated in Grand Rapids. In 1906 Bishop Henry Richter and the parish priests consolidated the high school students into the “Catholic Central High School” system. In 1906 the high school students of the five Catholic parishes in Grand Rapids were consolidated into a single Catholic Central High School system. Males were taught at the 1873 St. Andrew’s School. Females were taught at a separate location. Destroyed by a fire, St. Andrew’s School was rebuilt in 1915. In 1921 female students were moved to the former St. Joseph’s Seminary, across from St. Andrew’s. A campus grew around the buildings including a Romanesque Revival-style gymnasium built in 1925. While most classes were in separate buildings, male and female students shared student government positions, clubs, electives, and more. In 1953 an addition to the former seminary became the school’s main building; about seventeen hundred students attended coeducational classes there.