Marist Brothers College Rosalie Buildings are heritage-listed Roman Catholic monastery and school buildings at Fernberg Road, Rosalie, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. They are also known as Marist Brothers' Monastery and Marist College. They were added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 18 September 2008.
The school closed in November 2008 due to declining student numbers. However, the campus continues to be used by the Marist Brothers and the local Catholic parish.
History The Marist Brothers' College and Monastery at Fernberg Road, Rosalie was opened in 1929 as part of Roman Catholic Archbishop James Duhig's vision for the development of the Church in Queensland through the provision of affordable high quality Catholic education. It was the first Queensland school of the Marist Brothers' order and has continued to provide a religious education to generations of boys over an 80-year period. The school developed into a regional college with the erection in 1949 of the Sacred Heart Memorial College, which provided for families in five adjoining parishes and other areas of the city. The school drew mostly from its local population in the suburbs of Paddington, Milton, Bardon, Red Hill and Petrie Terrace which was made up mainly of Anglo-Irish Catholic Australians, indigenous aboriginal people and waves of Catholic immigrants firstly Irish, followed later by Italians, Croatians, Polish and other post-World War II immigrants. More recent enrolments at the school have included smaller groups of Islander, South American and South-East Asian families.
The first major land sales in the Paddington area occurred in 1859, when large country lots were sold. The steep terrain hampered transport and tracks followed the ridgeline, so that it was along these narrow corridors that development initially occurred. Ithaca Shire was created in 1887, and by 1903 Paddington was a densely populated suburb of the Town of Ithaca. The tramway reached Latrobe Terrace in 1898, and Fernberg Road in 1909, which spurred development.
In 1898 the first Roman Catholic Church in Paddington, the Church of the Holy Rosary, was built on an elevated site on the western side of Given Terrace near Fernberg Road. The early Catholic community was very small and the Sisters of Mercy travelled from the All Hallows' School at Fortitude Valley to teach catechism to the children. By 1907 the Roman Catholic community had grown considerably and a new timber church was built at the corner of Given Terrace and Fernberg Road next to the original church which was adapted for use as a school building. Continuing growth in the parish resulted in the construction of the presbytery on the opposite corner on Given Terrace in 1914, followed by the purchase of the Herbert Estate (the present Marist site) on Fernberg Road by Archbishop Duhig.
In 1918, the 1898 building from Given Terrace was moved onto the Herbert Estate for use by the Sisters of Mercy to teach the older girls and boys. The 1907 church was adapted for use as an infant school and a new brick masonry church designed by George Henry Male Addison was built next to it on the site of the original church. These works included the erection of brick walls along the street frontages of both properties giving them "an appearance of stability and permanence". The Sisters of Mercy, who had been travelling from All Hallows' by tram to teach the children built their convent further north on Given Terrace at the same time.
In the 1920s Rosalie was quickly developing as a "working men's parish", and its needs rapidly outstripped the services provided by existing schools. The Church was concerned with providing both secular and religious education and Duhig wanted to ensure that a high quality Catholic secondary education was available. The school population at Rosalie continued to grow and reached 300 students with 200 in the infant school, half of which were boys. With the Archbishop's approval it was decided to seek the assistance of the Marist Brothers to teach the boys and two new buildings were to be erected: a school for the older girls and a residence for the brothers. Both buildings were designed by the newly formed firm of architects, GHM Addison and Son and HS MacDonald, and the builder of the monastery was Dan Gallogly.
George Frederick Addison studied in Brisbane and trained in the office of his father, George Henry Male Addison. After serving in World War I he became a partner in his father's practice which had been responsible for the design of many buildings for the Catholic Church. After GHM Addison died in 1922, GF Addison continued the practice before forming a partnership with Herbert Stanley MacDonald in 1928. Their other projects included the Syncarpia block of flats at New Farm (1934), the former Queensland National Bank at South Brisbane (1929), the Goondiwindi Civic Centre (1938), and a large number of hotel commissions (mostly renovations) for Castlemaine Perkins.
James Duhig was born in Ireland and arrived with his family in Brisbane in 1885. He was ordained a priest in 1896 and in 1905 became Bishop of Rockhampton, at the age of 32. In 1912, he became Archbishop Robert Dunne's Co-Adjutor, taking on much of his administrative duties. Duhig energetically promoted the growth of the Church in Queensland. To this end, he was intimately involved throughout his career with the planning and building of over one hundred churches and schools. The first Catholic Brisbane parishes were established at Coorparoo, Kangaroo Point, South Brisbane, Red Hill and Rosalie. Although Dunne had encouraged only the Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers to establish branches of their orders in Queensland, Duhig was keen to encourage other religious orders to expand Catholic education in this State. He made approaches to several teaching orders including the Marist Brothers.
The Marist Brothers, an order originating in France and expanding to 33 countries throughout the world came as missionaries to the Pacific in 1857 before arriving in Sydney in 1872 to establish their first antipodean school at St Patrick's, Church Hill, followed by several others in inner Sydney. They opened schools in Victoria and South Australia and began negotiations in 1919 to open a school in Queensland. The Marist Brothers had been invited to Manly parish but found the premises unsuitable so Archbishop Duhig negotiated an agreement to establish a school and residence for the Brothers at Rosalie which was to be their 28th establishment in Australia. The arrival of the Marist Brothers was seen as "a red letter day" for Queensland where previously the Christian Brothers had a monopoly over the higher education of Catholic boys.
The foundation stone of the Rosalie monastery was laid on 29 July 1928 by Bartholomew Catteneo the Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop James Duhig, and parish priest, Dean W Lee with Br Reginald Moore, the Director of Lismore representing the Marist Brothers Provincial. The site chosen for the monastery was adjacent to the school building on Fernberg Road which was renovated and remodelled to accommodate the classes of boys that the brothers would teach. In December 1928 three Marist brothers arrived to open the Rosalie boys' school which commenced on 28 January 1929 with an enrolment of 135. The official opening of both the monastery and the girls' school, which was attached to the Convent of Mercy, by Archbishop James Duhig took place on 20 February 1929 by which time the enrolments at the boys' school had increased to 175 with grades three, four and five offered. An article in the Telegraph dated January 29, 1929 reported:The monastery, which is an entirely new building is a fine structure designed to give the maximum of comfort and convenience. On the ground floor are a study room, dining room, reception room, kitchen and housekeeper's flat in addition to a beautifully furnished chapel, equipped with an attractively finished altar, kneeling stands, brass candle sticks, sanctuary lamp etc. Upstairs are the sleeping quarters consisting of seven bedrooms, bathrooms and community rooms. On both floors wide verandahs run completely round the building and from these a commanding view is obtained, the monastery being situated at a high point. A feature of every room is the splendid ventilation and natural and artificial light. The furnishings and decoration are effective without being elaborate. The building appears to be faithfully built of weatherboard, brick and cement.In April 1929 the school was approved as a secondary school and by the end of that year five boys had won scholarships to the school and a few boarders had been taken in. The first secondary class of 1930 was accommodated upstairs in the monastery with six scholarship boys, some of the older boys, plus seven boarders. There were also 220 primary students. In 1935, a cottage was moved adjacent to the monastery from a site on Beck Street, and was remodelled and refitted for use as two classrooms and a boarders' dormitory until 1948.
With enrolments at the schools increasing to 450 in the late 1930s, the construction of a new college building was planned. During 1937–1938 a design was prepared and tenders were called for a hip-roofed two-storeyed masonry building with basement to accommodate 400 students. The new building, which was to contain eight classrooms, two science laboratories, a gymnasium and sheltered playing area was designed by architects Cullen and Egan. The widespread economic depression of the early 1930s, followed by the impact of World War II from 1939 to 1945, and perhaps the imminent opening of a new Marist college at Ashgrove where all the Rosalie boarders and 120 day boys were transferred in 1940, caused the project to be delayed for many years.
Frank Lee Cullen, Archbishop Duhig's nephew, trained as an articled pupil with Hennessy, Hennessy and Co, first at Leo Drinan's office in Brisbane in 1928 and then in Sydney between 1929 and 1932. Cullen returned briefly to the Brisbane office in 1933 before taking up a position with the Queensland Works Department as a draftsman. After completing his architectural education in 1934, Cullen worked with Harold Vivian Marsh Brown of Mackay before beginning his own practice in Brisbane in 1936. Cullen had several commissions that year for the Catholic Church, including a two-storey boarding school at Murgon, a brick school at Yeronga, a church at Buranda, school hall at Graceville and a presbytery at Holland Park.
In 1937 Cullen formed a partnership with Desmond Egan who had also worked with Hennessy and Hennessy in the 1920s and 1930s. The partnership received a large number of commissions from the Catholic Church as well as designing numerous hotels, residences and commercial buildings. Following the death of Egan in 1941 Cullen continued his practice as FL Cullen with new projects including several school buildings similar to the Rosalie College for the Catholic Church: St Mary's at Ipswich (1946); St Luke's at Buranda (1949); Our Lady Star of the Sea School at Gladstone (1950) and St Joseph's at Kangaroo Point (1951).