Founding Loyola Academy
Fr. Henry Dumbach, S.J. served as President of St. Ignatius College from 1900-1908. During his tenure, the college purchased the twenty-two acres that would become Loyola University Chicago's Lake Shore Campus for $161,000. As early as 1902, Fr. Dumbach expressed interest in moving the college or creating an academy on Chicago's north side.
In 1905, Fr. Dumbach received permission from the archdiocese to purchase land and start an academy in Chicago's far north side. In December 1905, St. Ignatius College came to an agreement with the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway (later The Milwaukee Road) to purchase the Rogers Park property for $8,250.00 per acre.
Initially, Fr. Dumbach did not have grand plans for the property. Instead, he wrote to Joseph W. Cremin, a Chicago real estate agent, in 1907, "Another thing I want badly is a simply [sic] school building next to our little church, so as to be able to begin a preparatory school next September." Years later, Cremin remarked about how much the campus had developed by the late 1920s, none of which would have been possible without Fr. Dumbach's vision, however limited it may have been at the time.
Loyola Academy and St. Ignatius Parish Group - 1908
Credit: Loyola University Chicago Archives & Special Collections
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the parochial grammar school system was expanding and changing in Chicago. Boys from these schools routinely enrolled in St. Ignatius high school, which was a department within St. Ignatius College. In 1906, Fr. Dumbach restructured the curriculum to align with the Chicago public high schools.
This change made the high school a distinct unit within the college, which allowed for the later transition to St. Ignatius College Preparatory School following the recharter of the college as Loyola University in 1909. St. Ignatius College Prep and Loyola University became separate institutions once the University moved all of its operations to the Lake Shore Campus in 1922.