(Formerly St. Helena High School; originally St. Joseph’s School for the Deaf)

915 Hutchinson River Parkway, SW cor. Bruckner Blvd.

Known as Msgr. Scanlan High School since 1972, this is the former St. Helena High School.  When established in 1949, there were actually two separately administered high schools—one for boys and the other for girls. St. Helena Commercial High School, established in 1956, was also on the same roomy property, in a connecting, but separate building called St. Helena Hall.  In 1976 the original high schools merged into the newly created, co-educational Msgr. Scanlan High School.  The commercial high school, closed in 2002 and was folded into Msgr. Scanlan High School when it closed. 

 

It was Msgr. Arthur J. Scanlan, pastor of the Parish of St. Helena, who founded these high schools. This Catholic parish is one of two serving the Parkchester community. Among a handful of remaining Catholic-parish high schools in the Bronx today, Scanlan High School is on property formerly owned by another Catholic institution—St. Joseph’s School for the Deaf  (now on the other side of Hutchinson River Parkway).  With the cutting through of the Hutchinson River Parkway in 1939, St. Joseph’s property was bisected.  A tunnel with tracks (now closed) ran under the highway and connected the two sections of St. Joseph’s.  The impracticality of maintaining the St. Joseph’s School on two sides of the highway, however, eventually led to the conversion of this site for St. Helena’s high schools.

 

The Scanlan High School, a 17-acre complex has more than a dozen buildings today, some of which date back to the St. Joseph’s occupancy.  Among the older and more substantial red brick structures are the large Main building constructed in 1897 and the adjoining St. Helena’s Hall.  Schickel & Ditmars, the architectural firm that worked on many Catholic structures throughout the archdiocese of New York, constructed them. The German born-Schickel and Canadian-born Ditmars preferred the Romanesque Revival style and these buildings are used as Scanlan High School’s main classroom facilities today. Other early buildings on the property include: the Sister’s Cottage; and the Sister’s Convent that was the old Ferris House dating from the 18th century.  The modern Gallagher Gymnasium faces out on Lafayette Ave.; and in recent years, the New York City Police Dept. has been using Commercial Hall, an older brick building facing the Bruce Bozzi Field.  

 

Janet Butler Munch