Take a stroll back through time and find out more about Archbishop Murray Memorial High School, Hill High School and Hill-Murray School.
Scroll through to learn more.
Take a stroll back through time and find out more about Archbishop Murray Memorial High School, Hill High School and Hill-Murray School.
Scroll through to learn more.
For the Sisters of St. Benedict at St. Paul’s Priory on Summit Avenue in St. Paul, 1958 was a “big year.” On May 10 of that year, the cornerstone was laid for a new school in a “rural” part of the east side of St. Paul. They opened their doors the following September to 211 ninth grade girls, naming the school after the man whose vision for the school for girls on the east side provided the impetus for the move: Archbishop Murray Memorial High School (AMMHS). Sadly, Archbishop Murray died the year before the school became a reality.
As construction was beginning on Archbishop Murray Memorial High School, less than a mile west on Larpenteur Avenue, Hill High School for boys was being established by the archdiocese under the leadership of Archbishop William O’Brady. Funded by the parishes of Minneapolis and St. Paul and through a large sum from the estate of James J. Hill and Mary T. Hill, the school became a reality. On September 1, 1959, eight Christian Brothers were sent to formally open the school, which enrolled its first class of 280 freshmen and 160 sophomores.
AMMHS graduated its first class in 1962. Twelve more classes would follow.
Seven lay teachers joined the Brothers at Hill High School as its first faculty. Enrollment increased to 802 in 1960 and 1,119 in 1961, when it graduated its first class of 157 students. The school established itself as an educational institution dedicated to excellence in both academics and cocurriculars and committed to the ideals of the Christian Brothers. By 1964, 1,274 boys crowded the halls of the new school.
A north wing (now the music area) and an adjacent farmhouse served as a home for the Sisters at AMMHS who taught at the school until the move to the new, nearby monastery on a cold, blustery day in January 1965.
The realities and financial challenges associated with declining enrollment spurred the merger of AMMHS and Hill High School in 1971 to form a coed school located at the Archbishop Murray site.
In 1971, the doors opened to 1,200 boys and girls. It was a transition marked by new friends, new schedules, crowded halls and cafeteria, and classes in the Monastery and at Hill. In athletic competition, the new school celebrated a state championship in hockey, a state tourney berth in wrestling, Central Catholic Conference championship in baseball, the best record ever for the school’s boys’ basketball team, and a CCC second place finish for the football Pioneers.
1958
1959
1962
1964
1965
1971
1971+
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