History
In 1851, St. Joseph’s College opened in the buildings of St. Joseph’s Parish off Willings Alley in Philadelphia, just a few blocks from Independence Hall. By then, a permanent church had replaced the old Chapel attached to the Jesuit Residence. On September 15, 1851, ninety-five students greeted Rev. Felix Barbelin, the first president of St. Joseph’s College, for their first day of class. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania chartered the school, and it was incorporated as "The St. Joseph's College In The City of Philadelphia" on January 29, 1852.
In 1866, the land that is now St. Joseph's Prep was open country near the Centennial Exposition in Fairmount Park. Around this time, the Jesuits of the Maryland Province were planning to open another parish in a part of the city more conducive to operating a college. The Girard area seemed like a natural location because it was a blossoming suburb with Girard College, Eastern State Penitentiary, a hospital and a reservoir nearby. Father Barbelin found an undeveloped block between 17th and 18th Streets and bounded on the north and south by Thompson and Stiles Streets. Here the Church of the Gesu and St. Joseph's Prep were built.
The Prep's school building, which had housed students for nearly 75 years, was almost completely destroyed by fire on the night of January 30, 1966. After fierce debate over the location and construction of a new school building—which included plans to relocate outside the city limits—the new Prep building, with modern (and fireproof) flourishes, opened in 1968 at the same location.
Read more about this topic: Saint Joseph's Preparatory School
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—John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
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“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)