Walking through South Campus at night could provoke a spooky feeling. Taking a turn toward the Provincial House might inflate this fear. With its large windows and aged architecture, the building looks like the perfect place to be haunted. However its history provides an antidote to these possible fears.
Prior to the Provincial House coming under the ownership of University of Missouri-St. Louis, it provided a home for the Province of the Daughters of Charity. This religious order has its roots in France, and after coming to the United States, the order expanded. “The story of the sisters here in St. Louis actually begins in 1828,” Carolie Prietto, provincial archivist for the Daughters of Charity, said.
“Four sisters came from Emmetsburg [Maryland] to start the first Catholic hospital West of the Mississippi … by 1910 … the American province had gotten too big to manage from Emmetsburg,” Prietto said. “It was decided by superiors in Paris to create a second American province to be headquartered in St. Louis.”
In 1914 the ground was broken and building began. The firm Barnett, Haynes, and Barnett, designers of the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis, made the plans for the Provincial House. They modeled it after the Hampton Court Palace in Great Britain, utilizing the architectural style known as Norman Gothic. This technique is visible in “the [building’s] height, the intricate stone trim, the lancet windows, the clock tower, the crenelated roof, [and] the arched entrance,” a pamphlet written by Sister Frances Mary Rutt said. She said another example is the hammer beam ceiling made out of solid oak in the chapel.
“It is as if man is reaching out from this material world to grasp the spiritual,” Rutt said. “One cannot help pausing in wonder at the skill of those who constructed it.”
During the time it was being built the sisters stayed in the St. Vincent’s Asylum, which is now Castle Park Apartments. An interesting literal connection exists between St. Vincent’s and the Provincial House. A tunnel filled with pipes was created for the purpose of transferring heat from the hospital. This explains “an erratic pattern” of graves in the Marillac Cemetery, Rutt said.
On Sept. 27, 1916, the Provincial House was consecrated and began to be used. From then to 2002 the sisters and their staff worked out of these buildings. They performed the business of the province, provided a place for sisters to go through their formation into the community, and also provided a place of retirement for the elderly sisters.
“Much of UM-St. Louis’ South Campus is land that used to be owned by the Daughters of Charity … those buildings [such as the Marillac Hall and the Ward E. Barnes Library] were originally built in the 1950s for a college that the sisters ran that was called Marillac College … [it was] sold to UM-St. Louis in 1976,” Prietto said.
The rest was sold in the 1990s. The only thing that remains is the cemetery plot which is still in the ownership of the sisters.
Having been a member of The Daughters of Charity since 1962, sister Rosa Lee Kramer has seen the Provincial House transform. Being her home for roughly 40 years, she experienced the campus life of the now gone Marillac College.
“There was a lot going on…it was all about preparing for service.” Kramer said.
She finds the grounds around the Provincial House to be more possessed by this spirit of service than any supposed hauntings.
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