St. Gregory's Abbey and College | |
Location | 1900 W. MacArthur Dr., Shawnee, Oklahoma |
---|---|
Coordinates | 35°22′3″N96°57′14″W / 35.36750°N 96.95389°W Coordinates: 35°22′3″N96°57′14″W / 35.36750°N 96.95389°W |
Area | 1 acre (0.40 ha) |
Built | 1915 |
Architect | Victor Klutho |
Architectural style | Tudor Gothic |
NRHP reference No. | 75001572 [1] |
Added to NRHP | August 15, 1975 |
Benedictine Hall is located on the Green Campus of Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma. It was the central feature of the now-closed St. Gregory's University (also known as St. Gregory's Abbey and College), housing its administration, library and most of its classes. Designed by St. Louis architect Victor Klutho, the facility opened in the fall of 1915.
St. Gregory's College grew from the Sacred Heart Mission in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma. Established in 1876 in what was then called Indian Territory, the mission school considered moving to a more populated area in the 1890s. After a 1901 fire that destroyed much of what was then called the "Catholic University of Oklahoma", the decision was made to move the high school and college to Shawnee, 35 miles (56 km) to the north. Viktor Klutho was hired to design the new facility. A specialist in Tudor revival architecture, Klutho designed a massive five-story brick building to combine church, school and abbey in a single edifice, opening to 40 boys in the fall term of 1915. This served until the 1940s when a new church was built nearby, and in the 1950s the abbey moved to a new campus adjoining the school. In the 1960s the school discontinued high school education and admitted women to the college. [2]
The college required a fireproof structure, so the new school was built of reinforced concrete, and surplus railroad rails from the Rock Island Railroad used in the foundation. The concrete walls were faced with brick, with stone accents. The building is a solid rectangle with a footprint of 260 feet (79 m) by 90 feet (27 m). The central portion of the building is expressed as a battlemented tower, four stories high over a raised basement, with slender corner turrets. From the main mass on either side extend four-story wings on raised basements, accented by projecting three-story oriel bays. The top of the wing is accentuated by a segmental balustrade. [2]
The main level contained administrative offices and the main entry. The second floor was occupied by the library. The third floor was classroom space and the fourth floor was reserved for science laboratories and classrooms. The large space within the fifth floor tower was originally a gymnasium, now a lecture hall. The basement housed support facilities. In 1967, a proposal to demolish the building was rejected due to the potential costs to raze such a solid structure. It was renovated, adding a T-section concrete stair tower to the exterior of the west side. [2] The building housed most of what became St. Gregory University's classes. [3]
Benedictine Hall was damaged by the 2011 Oklahoma earthquake. One turret collapsed immediately following the quake. [3] In the days that followed the earthquake, one of the turrets had to be pushed down, and the other two were removed brick by brick.
More than 3,400 donors from around the world contributed roughly $2.5 million to help the school reconstruct the turrets.
Timberlake Construction and Advanced Masonry, both of Oklahoma City, were charged with the task of rebuilding the turrets – this time with steel "bones" that could withstand an earthquake.
The decorative aspects of the towers were faithfully recreated. The brick was matched to the rest of the building, and the grotesques and shields that were part of the original gothic architecture were molded in the exact image of their predecessors. The new turrets were officially blessed during Homecoming on November 9, 2013. [4]
In December of 2018 the sale to Hobby Lobby of the Shawnee campus of St. Gregory's University, including Benedictine Hall, was approved by the bankruptcy court. The campus was leased to Oklahoma Baptist University, a private Christian liberal arts university in Shawnee. [5] In May of 2019, OBU renamed the tract as the OBU Green Campus, both in honor of the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby, and because the color green is one of OBU’s official university colors. [6] In December of 2019, Hobby Lobby and the Green family donated the campus to OBU. [7]
As part of the former St. Gregory’s Abbey and College, Benedictine Hall is on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma.
Shawnee is a city in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 29,857 in 2010, a 4.9 percent increase from the figure of 28,692 in 2000. The city is part of the Oklahoma City-Shawnee Combined Statistical Area; it is also the county seat of Pottawatomie County and the principal city of the Shawnee Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Ouachita Baptist University (OBU) is a private Baptist university in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. The university's name is taken from the Ouachita River, which forms the eastern campus boundary. It is affiliated with the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.
The College of St. Scholastica (CSS) is a private Benedictine college in Duluth, Minnesota. Founded in 1912 by a group of pioneering Benedictine Sisters, today St. Scholastica educates almost 4,000 students annually and has graduated more than 29,000 alumni. The college offers a liberal arts education and is located on 186 wooded acres overlooking Lake Superior.
Marycrest College Historic District is located on a bluff overlooking the West End of Davenport, Iowa, United States. The district encompasses the campus of Marycrest College, which was a small, private collegiate institution. The school became Teikyo Marycrest University and finally Marycrest International University after affiliating with a private educational consortium during the 1990s. The school closed in 2002 because of financial shortcomings. The campus has been listed on the Davenport Register of Historic Properties and on the National Register of Historic Places since 2004. At the time of its nomination, the historic district consisted of 13 resources, including six contributing buildings and five non-contributing buildings. Two of the buildings were already individually listed on the National Register.
Saint Anselm College is a private Benedictine liberal arts college in Goffstown, New Hampshire. Founded in 1889, it is the third-oldest Catholic college in New England. Named for Saint Anselm of Canterbury, the college continues to have a fully functioning and independent Benedictine abbey attached to it, Saint Anselm Abbey. As of 2017, its enrollment was approximately 2,000.
Benedictine University is a private Roman Catholic university in Lisle, Illinois. It was founded in 1887 as St. Procopius College by the Benedictine monks of St. Procopius Abbey in the Pilsen community on the West Side of Chicago. The institution has retained a close relationship with the Benedictine Order, which bears the name of St. Benedict, the acknowledged father of western monasticism.
Sacred Heart is a small unincorporated community in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, United States. Established in 1879 by Father Isidore Robot as a Catholic mission on the old Pottawatomie reserve, it was originally named Sacred Heart Mission. The name was changed to Sacred Heart in 1888, shortly before the area was opened to settlement by non-Indians.
Belmont Abbey College is a private, Catholic liberal arts college in Belmont, North Carolina. It was founded in 1876 by the Benedictine monks of Belmont Abbey. The school is affiliated with the Catholic Church and the Order of Saint Benedict. It is endorsed by The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College. Belmont Abbey is the only college in North Carolina affiliated with the Catholic Church.
Oklahoma Baptist University (OBU) is a private Baptist university in Shawnee, Oklahoma. It was established in 1910 under the original name of The Baptist University of Oklahoma. OBU is owned and was founded by the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.
St. Gregory's University was a private Catholic university. It was one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It had its main campus in Shawnee and an additional campus in Tulsa. The university closed its operations at the end of the fall 2017 semester.
Dr. John Wesley Raley (1903–1968) was an author, president of Oklahoma Baptist University for 27 years, a member of the Oklahoma Hall of Fame and of the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame.
The Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art is a non-profit art museum in Shawnee, Oklahoma, USA. It is located on the Oklahoma Baptist University Green Campus, being the campus of the former St. Gregory's University. The museum operated independently of St. Gregory's and survived its closure.
Charles Pat Taylor is a retired American university president. Taylor served over 20 years as President of Southwest Baptist University, and his most recent role was as the interim president of Oklahoma Baptist University. He retired from OBU when Heath Thomas assumed the role of president on January 1st, 2020.
St. Gregory's Abbey is a Roman Catholic monastery of the American-Cassinese Congregation of the Benedictine Confederation. The monastery, founded by monks of the French monastery of Sainte-Marie de la Pierre-qui-Vire in 1876, was originally located in present-day Konawa, Oklahoma and called Sacred Heart Abbey. At present the community numbers around twenty-one monks who celebrate the Eucharist and Liturgy of the Hours. They used to staff various parishes but no longer do so, and their school, St. Gregory's University, was closed and filed for bankruptcy in 2017.
John A. Peavey is a former American football player and coach. He served as the head football coach at William Paterson University from 1997 to 1999 and at Southwest Baptist University from 2005 to 2006, compiling a career college football record of 9–43. Peavey played professionally in the National Football League (NFL) with the New England Patriots and the Denver Broncos.
Rev. Gregory Gerrer, OSB was a Benedictine Priest at Sacred Heart Abbey, artist, art historian and museum founder.
The Drake University Campus Historic District is located in Des Moines, Iowa, United States. The historic district contains six buildings. Five of the buildings are collegiate buildings on the Drake University campus and one is a church. The period of significance is from when the university was founded in 1881 to the end of the presidency of Hill M. Bell in 1918. The historic district has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1988. It is part of the Drake University and Related Properties in Des Moines, Iowa, 1881—1918 MPS.
Viktor Klutho was an American architect of German descent, who designed a number of Catholic churches, schools, convents and rectories in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, and elsewhere.
Robert Lee Lynn was a prize-winning poet in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, who from 1975 to 1997 was the sixth president of Southern Baptist-affiliated Louisiana Christian University in Pineville, Louisiana. Previously he was an administrator and interim president at his alma mater, Oklahoma Baptist University, and a journalist primarily for a Baptist press.
The architecture of Jacksonville is a combination of historic and modern styles reflecting the city's early position as a regional center of business. According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, there are more buildings built before 1967 in Jacksonville than any other city in Florida, but it is also important to note that few structures in the city center predate the Great Fire of 1901. Numerous buildings in the city have held state height records, dating as far back as 1902, and last holding a record in 1981.