Saint Mary's High School was the first Catholic high school in Arizona, and has been part of the Greater Phoenix Metropolitan area since 1917.[4] St. Mary's was founded by the Sisters of the Precious Blood. The founders set aside classroom space for four boys and ten girls at St. Anthony's Elementary school. This was the beginning of the Saint Mary's community.
In 1920, Saint Mary's moved into its first, one-story home located on East Monroe Street. In 1928, all male students were transferred to Brophy College Preparatory School on North Central Avenue, leaving Saint Mary's school an all-girls facility. The Great Depression caused financial problems, leading to the closure of Brophy in 1936. The boys were temporarily without a Catholic high school. Male students moved back to St. Mary's, but this time into a new building. During the 1930s, one city block, bordered from Polk to Taylor and Second to Third Streets, had been purchased for $24,000. With this new land, a second Saint Mary's was built by the Franciscans whose goal was to educate those boys displaced by the closure of Brophy High School.
The separation of boys' and girls' schools lasted until 1958. By the end of 1958, the girls' school was condemned to make way for the Civic Plaza. Both schools were combined, making it mixed-gender once again. As a result of boys and girls attending the same facility, it became necessary to add classrooms. On March 20, 1961, Reverend Francis J. Green, O.D., Bishop of Tucson, performed the dedication ceremony for the new seven-room addition to the school, including a ramada and a library.
The Polk Street campus, built on 2 acres (8,100 m2), had a total of twenty-four classrooms and a gymnasium. There was a maximum of six hundred students, from very diverse backgrounds. The student body was approximately 90% Hispanic, 0% Anglo and 10% African American. The ravages of time and the rapid development of downtown Phoenix caused Saint Mary's to halt its growth on their inner-city campus. In 1988, Saint Mary's was razed to make room for the Arizona Center. The school moved to its present location at Third Street and Sheridan, renovated existing buildings, and constructed a multi-purpose building to house administration, classrooms, and a cafeteria. In 2007, the Virginia Piper building was completed, which houses fine arts classrooms, computer labs, and the 275-seat Wiegand Auditorium.
Gymnasium
Financial constraints prevented the school from building a gym at the Third Street and Sheridan campus; a new facility was estimated to cost the school $1.2 million. With help from the community the construction of the Saint Mary's gym began. A nearby defunct Catholic high school, Gerard Catholic High School, left behind a prefabricated metal building that had housed a gymnasium. A former graduate of Saint Mary's was able to contact a contractor who agreed to relocate the steel superstructure. After this first step was completed, volunteers pulled together and began creating a gym from parts of other buildings all over the city. The project cost approximately $400,000. After a donation of $100,000 from a charitable trust was matched, St. Mary's borrowed the remaining $200,000 from the Diocese of Phoenix. The flooding of Camelback High School's gymnasium was another advantage. [clarification needed] The school's athletic program could not afford the time and risk of trying to dry out the maple floor. With the insurance company's permission, Saint Mary's took the donated wet wood to dry out in a warehouse. For the lights, scoreboards, and backboards another Phoenix school was soon to be demolished and was also a source. The source of 36,000 pounds of tile for the locker rooms and showers was the donation of another destroyed building. The two-story gym was also fortunate to boast an elevator donated by a former graduate. Altogether, Saint Mary's was able to reuse materials for its gym.
