Blessed Sacrament Academy

In October 1824, the Rev. Mother Augustine, who is the superior general of the Order of the Perpetual Adoration in America, was sent to this country with a colony of four sisters to establish the order, Louisiana being the objective point of her work. In Jefferson Parish, the reverend mother and the sisters established themselves, and within a very short time the order increased sufficiently for them to seek larger fields, which they did, going to New Orleans, where the “Mother House” was established and still exists.

From then on, the Order of the Perpetual Adoration became a factor in the Catholic church in this country. They increased so rapidly that after a short time, branch houses from the Mother House existed throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Washington D.C. The members of this order, in addition to the three vows common to all other orders, bind themselves to the vows of perpetual adoration and education of youth. As the lore goes, in 1881, while visiting Birmingham on her way to New York, Sister Mary Augustine tossed a sacred medal onto a vacant lot near Elyton Station, asking Saint Mary for her blessing to return and establish a convent. Sister Augustine was able to fulfill her mission, as Rev. Mother Mary Augustine she returned to Birmingham at the invitation of Father Patrick Turner, pastor of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament at West End in 1913.

Rev. Father Turner came to Birmingham in 1911 from the pastorate of the Church of the Sacred Heart at Pensacola to take charge of the parish at West End, which at the time had no place of worship. The congregation met in the Odd Fellows Hall and thus his humble work began. Father Turner was constantly looking for a suitable location for both a church and a school. One day while casually mentioning to one of his parishioners that he had found some acreage at West End that he considered valuable as a location, the lady mentioned that some relatives of hers had an option on it and would look into it. A few days later, Father Turner made the purchase of 8 or more acres, upon which the church and school are located today.

The boarding school was designed by Hungarian architect Albert Olszewski von Hurbulis, a resident of Washington D.C. who received numerous commissions from The Roman Catholic Church. The four-story, yellow pressed brick building was designed in a stripped-Classical or French Renaissance style. The facade, divided into five bays, with the central and end bays projecting slightly, is wrapped by a projecting cornice. The central bay has a broken arch pediment topped by a cross and a limestone portal at the head of the entrance stairs consisting of an arched pediment supported by Ionic columns with a carved relief of two angels kneeling before a monstrance. The ground floor is clad in limestone with buff-colored brick above. The end bays have subordinate projecting bays on the lower three floors. The rectangular window openings are spanned by limestone lintels. Blessed Sacrament Academy, Convent of the Perpetual Adoration, was founded by the Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration in 1911. A cornerstone for the Convent of Perpetual Adoration was laid on October 27, 1912, and the building housing the school and convent was dedicated on October 8, 1913.

Blessed Sacrament Academy was the first Catholic high school in Birmingham. The school served upper grades until it was converted into an elementary school in 1948. A chapel featuring Ionic pilasters, a beamed ceiling and a dozen non-figurative stained-glass windows occupies the central space on the main floor. Originally, the main altar was located in a coffered recess and flanked by side altars on the south wall and the walls and ceiling were decorated with colored stencil-work consisting of medallions and arabesques. The well-educated nuns taught classes ranging from basic math and sciences to music, theater, and foreign language. When the school hosted a theater performance or play, the entire West End neighborhood would attend. Blessed Sacrament Academy operated with only several hundred students annually, so class sizes were kept small. However, the school building served more than just an educational purpose. For many within the neighborhood, Blessed Sacrament Academy became a social center for community activities and fellowship.

Most of the students who attended Blessed Sacrament Academy lived off-campus, though a few chose to live on-campus in rooms on the upper floors. The nuns also lived at the school. The room sizes varied from large corner suites to small rooms with the width of a janitor’s closet. As the notoriety and prestige of the boarding school increased, students came from as far as Canada and Mexico to attend classes. After World War II, a steady drop in enrollment continued for the next two decades. By the 1970s, the academy was operating on a bare-bones budget. Blessed Sacrament Academy needed a minimum number of students enrolled to remain open.

Blessed Sacrament Academy was the last school operated by the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. After several semesters of failing to meet the minimum student enrollment, the historic boarding school was forced to close in 1980. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 28,1980. In 1985, the property was sold to another church, who attempted to repurpose the building. Unfortunately, that attempt also failed after operating costs were too expensive. The church vacated the building for a smaller structure and left the former boarding school abandoned. Sadly, the historic building has been left vacant ever since and is currently sealed and alarmed.

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