Mercy High School - Yearbook (San Francisco, CA)

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the More tradition The MERCY SPIRIT that inspires our school today had its San Francisco birthplace in a humble rented convent on Vallejo Street one hundred-five years ago. Seven years after landing in the rough and turbulent San Francisco of 1854, the Sisters of Mercy consolidated their already flourishing social work by erecting a new St. Mary's Hospital on Rincon Hill, the historic height at First and Bryant Streets Clevelled two decades ago for construction of the approach to the Bay Bridgej. Here the first Catholic hospital on the Pacific Coast became a power plant of social order and the works of Mercy in the pioneer City. The spirit of -mercy radiated to all parts of the City as each day Sisters went from this Mercy Motherhouse to instruct and relieve the distressed, to visit the State Prison, the City jail, Boys' Detention Home, the poor and sick in their wretched dwellings. Our beautiful Mercy High School can trace its history back to this Rincon Hill prop- erty where in 1871 Mother M. Baptist Russell, the Pioneer Foundress, built Our Lady of Mercy Academy, the first Catholic secondary school in the area. Here hundreds of San Francisco's finest fitizens received their education. This Monitor description of the first Mercy High School shows how welcome even modest facilities were in a City critically poor in educational institutions: It was with the greatest pleasure that we visited yesterday the new school building just erected by the Sisters of Mercy. It is thirty-six by one hundred and fifty feet and is divided into two large assembly rooms off each of which there are two class rooms with galleries for recreation. There are also two music rooms. We saw cabinets containing a collection of specimen in natural historical setting for use of the classes. The whole building is lofty and well ventilated, supplied with very neat school furniture including a large expanse of blackboard. Along the entire south side runs a wide covered balcony with seats where the pupils can enjoy them- selves during recesses. The entrance is on First Street. The MERCY SPIRIT on Rincon Hill was extended in 1874 to a vocational school for girls. The employment bureau attached to this first Mercy Business Departmentl' placed over a thousand girls a year in good positions. Today, language students are often asked to record tests and assignments on records which the instructor plays back to check pronunciation. Our placement ofiice helps to secure posi- tions for business students just as the Rin- con academy's ofiice secured positions for girls of 19th Century San Francisco. Dressmaking, no longer a lucrative career for Mercy girls, remains a valu- able skill. Students at the Rincon Hill academy learned to make tailored gar- ments Cwithout electric Singersj. 5

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fi Mother M. Baptist Russell and the first Sisters of Mercy taught school in the basement of St. Mary's Cathedral in 1855. The original church at California Street and Grant Avenue burned and was replaced by this now-his- toric brick building, no longer the cathedral but a cosmopolitan center of the Faith--wedged be- tween International Settlement and the bustling financial district ,,.q.-nav' -of in'

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Two especially interested spectators at the 1958 Awards Assembly were Mother M. Thomasine and Sister M. Cal- lista. It was while Mother M. Thomasine was Mother General that plans were completed by the General Council for the City's new Mercy. As Mother Vicar and Director of Mercy Schools, Sister M, Callista supervised construc- tion, planned school labs and furnishings, and developed the curriculum. AW -.tr s if fairs, speech con ff ll 'act tl Mercy?-ites Vlany San Franciscans remember 1958 as the year the last ferryboat was retired. In appreciation of the devoted nursing Fast tray elling bridge busses replaced the hustling little boats that carried millions services of the Sisters of Mercy, especially' of travellers across the Bay to the City of the wondrous skyline Meanwhile Inter- during the terrible smallpox epidemics of national Airport home of the jets and Constellations and vsorld s largest terminals, the 18705, the S.F. City authorities granted free transportation on municipal streetcars to all religious communitiez.