Mundelein College: A Legacy of Women's Education and Innovation
Mundelein College, a former private Catholic women's college in Chicago, Illinois, holds a significant place in the history of women's education. Founded by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVMs), it provided a comprehensive Catholic liberal arts education for 60 years. Located on the far north side of Chicago, bordering the Rogers Park and Edgewater neighborhoods, Mundelein College served a diverse student body and pioneered innovative programs. In 1991, it affiliated with neighboring Loyola University Chicago, leaving behind a legacy that continues to shape Loyola's values and programs.
Founding and Early Years
Mundelein College was founded in response to a call by Cardinal George Mundelein for a Catholic women’s college in Chicago. The Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVMs), based in Iowa, took on the challenge. Upon his placement to the position of archbishop of Chicago, Mundelein had made the education of Catholics one of his primary goals. Meanwhile, the growth of the BVM order of sisters had outpaced the educational ability of Mount Saint Joseph, the BVM college in Dubuque, Iowa. The college opened its doors for class registration on September 15, 1930, just nineteen months after construction began. At the close of the college's first academic year, on June 3, 1931, traffic was rerouted, the uniformed bands of St. Mary's High School and Immaculata High School played on the front steps, and the Knights of St.
The official groundbreaking ceremony for Mundelein College was held on November 1, 1929, a mere three days after the stock market crash. Despite the looming economic depression, construction continued, and the 15-story building, nicknamed the "Skyscraper Building," was completed in just nine months. In September 1930, Mundelein College opened its doors to 378 women.
During the first few decades, courses covered both traditional liberal arts and practical life skills, ranging from Latin, philosophy, literature, physics, and chemistry to home economics and secretarial skills.
The "Skyscraper" and Campus Expansion
According to Sr. Ann Ida Gannon, BVM, a former president of the college, the building was familiarly called the "Skyscraper" not because of its height (although it was the tallest in the area for several years after construction), but because of the steel framework and structure that characterize urban skyscrapers. When new, the fourteen-story Art Deco building dominated the skyline of Chicago's far north side as building construction stalled during the Great Depression. The Skyscraper had few equals in size and style outside of Downtown Chicago (similarly designed buildings include the Palmolive Building, the Chicago Board of Trade Building, and the West Town Bank Building).
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Designed by Nairne Fisher, who was only 28 at the time and had not graduated from college, the building showcases Art Deco features, including strong vertical lines and geometric shapes. Although Chicago architect Joseph W. McCarthy is listed as the supervising architect, the building was designed by Nairne W. Fisher, from St. Cloud Minnesota. McCarthy had been Cardinal Mundelein's choice. However, after Mother Isabella Kane dismissed McCarthy's Gothic Revival design, she turned to Fisher with whom she had worked before. Army Intelligence unit which produced maps during World War I, studied briefly at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, worked as a draftsman at lumberyards in Minnesota and South Dakota, and registered as a Minnesota architect in 1922.
The most striking feature of the building's exterior is its guardian angels. The two towering statues at the entrance represent the angels Uriel ("Light of God") and Jophiel ("Beauty of God"). Uriel holds the book of wisdom and points to a cross in Bas-relief on the fourteenth floor.
Originally intended to be a self-contained educational facility, the interior contained classrooms, laboratories, art and music studios, a library, an auditorium, a chapel, a cafeteria, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, reception areas and meeting rooms, and seven floors of living quarters for the BVM staff. The college was originally self-contained, meaning that not only were classes held there, but there was also a pool, a library, offices, a cafeteria, a gymnasium, a chapel, an auditorium, a reception hall, and the sisters of the order lived on the top floors. The technology for elevators at the time couldn’t go past the 9th floor, so the sisters had to take the stairs the rest of the way up (in case you were wondering why the current Mundelein Center’s main elevators don’t go past the 9th floor). According to Loyola’s Women and Leadership Archives, Mundelein College was the first self-contained skyscraper college for women in the world and the last four-year women’s private college in Illinois at the time of its affiliation with Loyola University Chicago.
In the 1940s the Mundelein Skyscraper boasted one of the country's highest observatories containing a telescope, and the longest Foucault pendulum in existence at the time. In 1938: A nine-story Foucault pendulum is installed in an empty elevator shaft of the Mundelein skyscraper. The instrument, which measures the rotation of the earth, is the largest of its kind and gains national attention. This is just one of the educational opportunities provided to students by Dr. Mary Therese Langerbeck, BVM, the head of the physics department and the only woman religious in the world to hold a Ph.D.
However, Mundelein College’s Skyscraper was not big enough to house the rapid growth of the school. Students were requesting classes that Mundelein could not possibly offer and class sizes were growing out of the building. In 1934 Mundelein expanded to the surrounding properties, acquiring two privately owned mansions. The White Marble Mansion, a privately owned mansion built in 1090 became Piper Hall and the now demolished Philomena Hall were both acquired in 1934. Piper Hall originally served as a library until the addition of the Resource Learning Center-now Sullivan Center for Student Services. Piper Hall then became a student center and as a Religious Studies Center, it housed a pool hall, a sewing center, and a coffee house called “The House”. Very quickly, Mundelein had to add dormitories for students to live in. Coffey Hall-which is now offices and classrooms-was built to house Mundelein College students. In 1961, Philomena Hall was razed to make room for Mundelein College's newest dormitory, Coffey Hall. Opened for occupation in 1962, the new residence hall accommodated 208 students. Coffey Hall has since been renovated for use as department office space. In 1963, Mundelein College purchased Northland Apartments to the west of the Skyscraper. Northland Hall housed a further 250 students.
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The original library was housed in room 401 of the Skyscraper building. Stocked mainly with donated books, the entire initial library collection was cataloged and shelved in only thirty days. The main book donation came from Rev. John Rothensteiner of St. Louis. The initial donation consisted of 2,000 volumes; however, he later bequeathed his entire 20,000 volume library to the college. Mundelein College moved its library in 1934 to the white marble mansion purchased from Albert Mussey Johnson. Reading rooms occupied the first two floors of the mansion while the former ballroom on the third floor housed the book stacks. The white marble mansion remained the college's library until 1967. After the books were removed from the mansion, it took on multiple personalities including a student center, a coffee shop, a speech clinic (after Philomena was razed), and the Religious Studies Center. The crowning jewel in the fast-paced growth of the campus during the 1960s, the Learning Resource Center, built in 1967, became Mundelein College's new library. Officially dedicated in 1969, the Learning Resource Center provided Mundelein students with a science and lecture auditorium, 100-seat audiovisual room, faculty and student lounges, seminar rooms, and a rare book room.
Starting in 2005, the Skyscraper Building went through an almost 10 year renovation process modernizing the facility while retaining much of its original deco architectural beauty. The renovations, completed by architects from Baranski Hammer Moretta & Sheehy, were completed from top to bottom. The building’s elevator shaft didn’t originally extend to the top four floors, which served as living quarters for the BVMs. Thus, a major project was to build an elevator that went all the way from the basement to the 14th floor. The biggest renovation challenge came with the construction of the Newhart Family Theatre. In order to clear the space needed for the stage opening, three structural columns had to be cut out. In October 2012 the building was rededicated the Mundelein Center for the Fine and Performing Arts. As the Mundelein Center for the Fine and Performing Arts, the building currently has 57 classrooms on the Lake Shore campus - the most of any current academic building.
Student Life and Activities
Clubs were a major part of student life at Mundelein. In the first decade, twenty-two clubs were created, ranging from the Stylus (writing) Club and basketball team to the Chemistry Club and International Relations. By the end of the decade, 22 academic, social, and athletic clubs are up and running. Upon the United States entry into World War II the Mundelein College student body participated in a variety of war effort activities. In addition to planting a victory garden near the library, Mundelein students held a jeep drive which raised funds equivalent to the cost of two United States Army Jeeps, held several blood drives, and purchased a war bond with the proceeds from their annual benefit.
Many of the students who attended Mundelein College were the first women in their family to go on to higher education in a time where it was rare for women to get an education. The women who were educated at Mundelein came from many ethnic and socio-economic groups and were often the first females in their families to attend college. Recruited mainly from Chicago’s parochial school system--including the BVM's own central high schools, St. Mary’s and The Immaculata--Mundelein students were young women whose families were committed to furthering their education in a Catholic environment. The College allowed them to do so by making tuition affordable to working-class budgets; in addition, most students commuted from home, saving the cost of room and board. Until the late 1960s, approximately two-thirds of the student body--mostly Irish-American--were the first in their families to attend college. Despite women’s limited role within a faith governed by an all-male hierarchy, higher education was not a privilege limited to Catholic men. Between 1915 and 1950, the number of all-women’s Catholic colleges in the United States grew from nineteen to 166. By the 1950s, women’s colleges made up two-thirds of all Catholic colleges in the United States, despite the growth of coeducation (the number of Catholic women's colleges in the United States would peak at 170 in 1968). [1] Women’s colleges, argued one Catholic sister, were best qualified “to train women for leadership in civic affairs, to be better mothers, and to live personal lives of inspiration and integrity.” For this commentator and many others, the personal was indeed political, as women’s education was consistently linked to future Catholic families and Cold War prerogatives. “America will be as strong as its family life,” the sister concluded.
Despite the College's name, these young women's Mundelein experience was shaped by women. We often speak of Catholic sisters' important institutional roles in growing the Church, but during the conference weekend, I appreciated the use of a term I hadn't heard before: sister-builders. "Builder" is a particularly useful way for thinking about the Chicago BVMs, who managed a construction project in the early years of the Great Depression, getting their dream of a "skyscraper college" off the ground in 1929. Their vision for a modern, Art Deco high-rise is, perhaps, a point that deserves further reflection in conversation with Cushwa's Catherine R. In addition to the idea of sister-builders, I'd also suggest we haven't talked much about sister students. What did it mean for laywomen and sisters to share the classroom, together, as students?
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Innovation and Outreach
Mundelein pioneered such areas as Weekend College, credit for lifetime experience, graduate religious education for women, graduate liberal studies, and Latina outreach. Mundelein students were also permitted to take courses at neighboring Loyola University Chicago, and Loyola students took courses at Mundelein. The students of the two schools also shared The Madonna Della Strada Chapel as well as common areas where the students mingled, even the library. Mundelein students could take courses at the downtown campus at Lewis Towers, formerly known as Lewis Towers Campus. Soon, students were also able to take courses at Columbia College, Northwestern University, and DePaul University.
In 1957 Mary Ann Ida Gannon became Mundelein College's sixth president and Mundelein College began a new phase of development. That year 48 young sisters began their education side by side with Mundelein College's lay student population as part of the scholasticate program. Mary Ann Ida Gannon initiated a college wide self-study in 1962 to determine Mundelein College's continued relevance as an institution of higher academic education. The results of the self-study became the driving force for several experimental programs. Mundelein College updated its mission statement, redesigned its term system and core curriculum. In 1965, the college implemented a Degree Completion Program for women who had dropped out of college before receiving their degrees. Although Mundelein College had amended their articles of incorporation in 1968 to admit men, the education and cultivation of women remained its primary focus. Mundelein College was not immune to the forces of feminism and in 1977 the seeds of an interdisciplinary women's studies program began to germinate. Over the next two years, Mundelein College held yearly conferences on women. However, it wasn't until 1983 that a Women's Studies minor was finally accepted by the college Curriculum Committee. The decades between 1960 and 1990 also saw an increase of minority outreach at Mundelein College. In 1966, the college launched Upward Bound, a federally funded summer program to help minority high school students succeed to college. Responding to the death of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, black students at Mundelein College formed MuCUBA (Mundelein College United Black Association) to address the racial barriers which existed within the walls of the college. Many Mundelein students embraced the spirit of activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Seven BVM sisters and "a busload" of students traveled to Alabama to participate in the Selma March for Civil Rights. Mundelein College's student body participated in the national wide strike protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and the student deaths at Kent State University.
In 1964: Mundelein enrolls its first male student. 1965: The Degree Completion Program begins. 1966: In an effort to increase diversity in the student body, a Mundelein College chapter of Upward Bound begins through the efforts of Sister Mary St. George, BVM, Sister Mary Eloise, BVM, and Sister Mary Julia, BVM. 1968: The Graduate Religious Studies program is established, the first in the Chicago area. It is the first master's degree offered by Mundelein College. 1969: Mundelein College United Black Association (MuCUBA) is founded. The student organization provided community for black students, advocated for more supportive services and a Black Studies program, and planned programs such as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebrations. 1971: Mundelein College amends its charter to allow men to enroll in the college. This was done due to the growing popularity of Mundelein’s adult education programming offering classes on nights and weekends. 1974: Mother Teresa of Calcutta visits Mundelein College, the first of two visits to the school. 1974: Mundelein expands its offering to adult students with the opening of the Weekend College in Residence. The first of its kind in the nation, Weekend College allowed students to earn a bachelor’s degree by attending classes only on Saturdays and Sundays. 1976: To address and support Mundelein's and Chicago's growing Hispanic populations, the college creates the Hispanic Institute. 1983: In recognition of women student leaders at Mundelein College, The Sister Mary Ann Ida Gannon, BVM Leadership Award Program is established.
Affiliation with Loyola University Chicago
Enrollment in Mundelein College dropped dramatically in the 1980s. By the end of the decade, the college could no longer financially support itself. Funding for the college depended solely on donations and on tuition money, which led to the legal affiliation of Loyola University Chicago and Mundelein College in 1991. According to Sisler, the change met little resistance. “People were of course upset because their school no longer existed,” Sisler said. However, Loyola’s values very closely lined up with Mundelein’s. The president of Loyola at the time, Raymond C. Baumhart, S.J., promised to keep Mundelein whole. The majority of Mundelein’s staff stayed, as did the majority of the professors. According to Sisler, very little changed after the acquisition. She said the biggest change (and the most upsetting) was that her school no longer existed; no one could graduate with a degree from Mundelein College.
Sister Carolyn Farrell, BVM, oversaw Mundelein during this transition as its last president. Many of Mundelein’s programs are added to Loyola’s curriculum and Mundelein’s Weekend College becomes known as Mundelein College at Loyola University.
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