Saint Mary’s Hall will no longer be a housing option
Saint Mary’s Hall, an on-campus residence for the last 40 years, will close at the end of the spring semester.
Current residents of Saint Mary’s were informed of the decision shortly after returning from winter break.
“The decision came down very recently,” said Shawn Washart, the residential area manager for residences on the Maguire Campus. “For all of our houses, we are trying to make sure they are the best place they can be, making improvements and determining whether or not it is best fit to be a residence hall.”
Saint Mary’s will undergo renovations, but no decision has been made to return it to its status as a residence hall.
“It will be offline for next year and likely into future years, ” said Kelly Bersett, associate director of Housing Operations.
Built in 1915, the university bought Saint Mary’s from the Sisters of Bon Secours in 1985. St. Joe’s had been renting the building from the nuns since 1978.
Eden Kim ’20, a current resident of the house, is upset about the loss of Saint Mary’s as a residence hall.
“It feels like we are losing a little bit of our tradition,” Kim said.
(Photo by Luke Malanga ’20).
Gregory Dexter ’18 has been living at Saint Mary’s for two and a half years. He is a member of the Romero Residential Learning Community (RLC), a group of 32 students interested in community service and social justice issues, who live together in Saint Mary’s. The Romero RLC has been in Saint Mary’s since 2011.
“I would like to see it be preserved as a special place, no matter what it is turned into,” Dexter said. “Unlike other campus houses, it provides a unique group. I have seen the group change people, but the specialness about it stays with the house.”
The Romero RLC will move to Moore Hall when Saint Mary’s closes. Moore Hall, located on Overbrook Avenue, offers a similar style of housing to Saint Mary’s according to Bersett, and has the added bonus of having a private bathroom for each room.
While the Romero RLC will live on in Moore Hall, Dexter’s nostalgia for the brick and mortar remains. He said the specialness “is part of the environment.”
“I do not think it has anything to do with the RLC,” Dexter said. “If you took the same group of people and put them in a different house, it would not be the same.”
