HistoricSiteMarkers
Early RepublicProgressive & Modern Era

Louisville Girls High School

Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky

Marker Inscription

Louisville Girls High School. Serving girls' education for almost 100 years, school was originally known as Female High School and provided women of Louisville with a strong educational base. Opened on April 7, 1856 at Center and Walnut, school functioned on 1st Street and at 5th and Hill before moving to this site in 1934. Architect was J. M. Colley. It consolidated with DuPont Manual Boys School in 1950.

Erected by Kentucky Historical Society

The Story

Opened on April 7, 1856, as the Female High School, this institution gave the young women of Louisville a rigorous public education for nearly a century. It moved through several locations before settling on this site in 1934 in a building designed by J. M. Colley, and in 1950 it consolidated with the DuPont Manual boys' school.

Why it matters

For generations it opened the door to serious schooling for girls, marking the slow expansion of educational opportunity for American women.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • · J. M. Colley

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

St. Vincent Orphanage & Infirmary

Louisville, KY

From 1836 to 1891 this site held St. Vincent Orphanage and Infirmary, begun by Catherine Spalding to shelter sick and abandoned children. Co-founder of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Spalding poured her life into the work, once writing that the orphanage was "the only place on earth to which my heart clings." It was said that every orphan in Louisville claimed her as their mother; she died here in 1858 after contracting pneumonia.

Bethlehem Academy

Bardstown, KY

Bethlehem Academy grew from an 1819 request by Bishop Flaget that the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth open an elementary school near Bardstown. Sisters Harriet Gardiner, Polly Beaven, and Nancy Lynch launched the school, which Father David named Bethlehem, and it served for generations as an elementary and high school for girls before relocating to its present site in 1959 and becoming coeducational in 1970.

Eminence College

Eminence, KY

Chartered by the Kentucky Legislature as a high school in 1856, this institution became Eminence College in 1861 and grew into one of the state's earliest coeducational boarding schools, where men and women were equally represented. Under the long presidency of Rev. W. S. Giltner from 1858 to 1893, it added a commercial department and a normal school for training teachers, with enrollment peaking near 200 before it closed in 1895.

Loretto Motherhouse

Marion County, KY

In 1812, on the Kentucky frontier, Belgian-born missionary priest Charles Nerinckx founded the Sisters of Loretto, one of the first religious congregations of women established in the United States without ties to a European order. The community made education of children its calling, and its motherhouse rose on ground once home to Stephen T. Badin, the first Catholic priest ordained in the new nation. From this rural Marion County site, Loretto sisters would go on to teach across the American West.