Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary - 1940s To 1950s

1940s To 1950s

The Quigley-educated rector and faculty member, Msgr. John W. Schmid, followed Msgr. Foley as the fourth rector in 1944, and expanded the language curriculum, sending professors (Quigley faculty were called "professors" or "profs" for short) to study in Mexico, Canada, and Europe, and added sciences and physical education as requirements. Schmid, seeing the student body of Quigley growing to 1,300 near the end of his thirty-one years of service to Quigley as professor and rector in 1955, began a formal study for expansion of the school, and stepped aside so a younger man could lead it. The vigorous and athletic Msgr. Martin M. Howard, another Quigley graduate and professor, fluent in classical languages and Spanish, was named rector on 18 May 1955, by Cardinal Samuel Stritch.

According to Msgr. Koenig's account, Msgr. Howard faced the task of fitting four years of high school and two years of college into Quigley's five-year curriculum with a "Sulpician language-school model" of seminary inherited from Msgr. Purcell a half-century previous. With frequent faculty consultation, Howard participated in plans with Cardinal Stritch to convert Quigley to a four-year program, build a second Quigley near Chicago's south suburbs, establish a four-year free-standing college seminary, and shorten the program at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois to four years of graduate study. In the mean time, the Archdiocese rented the Ogden School at 39 West Chestnut from the Chicago Board of Education as Quigley's "Annex" to better accommodate the overflow of Quigley's 1,300 students.