About St. Thomas

School History

A New Century

A New School in Houston

It was 1900 when 44 young boys gathered to create the first classes at St. Thomas College, in an unused building of the old Franciscan Monastery. Their faculty in that school-in-a-warehouse on the banks of Buffalo Bayou were three priests of the Congregation of St. Basil, led by the school’s founder and first principal, the Rev. Nicholas Roche, C.S.B. For the Basilian Fathers it was a further outreach of an ideal that had begun in 1822 with the founding of the order in Annonay, France. For Houston, it was the advent of a tradition of fine secondary education firmly grounded in the Catholic Faith, and consecrated to the promulgation of Goodness, Discipline and Knowledge.

From that temporary accommodation in 1900, the Basilians moved soon and briefly into another location on Main Street (later the site of the old Kirby Theater), and in 1903 took possession of a fine new facility on Austin Street at Hadley, where the school stayed and flourished until 1940.

The student population for the first quarter of the century was small compared to the nearly 650 enrolled today. The Fathers not only taught all the classes but worked in the parishes where they were all closely acquainted with the families of the students.

Tuition was twelve dollars a month (for those whose families could pay) and many of the students earned their way through school working after hours for their tuition. While the tuition today is much higher, the tradition of the tuition assistance still continues.

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The above article was copied in part from the St. Thomas Web Site

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