Lake Effect News

By MARK LANGLOIS

Correspondent

Eighty years ago on Nov. 1, 1929, two days after New York stock market crashed, the official groundbreaking ceremony for Mundelein College took place at 1023 W. Sheridan Road in Rogers Park. Even though the Great Depression had begun, the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary opened their doors for registration on Sept. 15, 1930.

Hollywood came to Rogers Park's Granada Theatre for the Midwest premiere of "The Trouble With Angels." Mundelein College hosted the film's stars Rosalind Russell, Hayley Mills and Mary Wickes, pictured here cavorting with students and BVM sisters. The film was based on a novel by Mundelein alumnae Jane Trahey. (Photo courtesy of Loyola University's Women And Leadership Archives.)

Mundelein was the first self-contained skyscraper college for women in the world. Pope Pius XI told the press, “I don’t know if it’s the greatest college in the world, but I’m sure it is the one nearest heaven.” The skyscraper featured guardian angels Uriel (“Light of God”) and Jophiel (“Beauty of God”) on its 14th floor façade, with Uriel holding the book of wisdom pointing to a cross, and Jophiel holding the planet Earth and lifting the torch of knowledge.

At the close of the college’s first academic year on June 3, 1931, the Knights of St. Gregory escorted Cardinal George Mundelein to the official dedication ceremony with the uniformed bands of St. Mary’s and Immaculata High Schools playing on the front steps. The archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Mundelein was extremely focused on the education of Catholics.

During its first decade, Mundelein College offered traditional liberal arts and practical life skills courses to its female students of diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. In the 1940s the Mundelein College skyscraper boasted one of the country’s highest observatories containing a telescope and the world’s then longest Foucault pendulum. The college featured 22 extra-curricular clubs ranging from the Stylus (writing) Club, a basketball team, a Chemistry Club and the International Relations Club. Mundelein’s Verse Speaking Choir worked under contract with NBC Radio and its members included future Academy Award-winning actress Mercedes McCambridge (class of 1937). Mundelein College students also started the first Midwest college unit of the American Red Cross during World War II.

Jane Trahey (class of 1943) would base her novel Life with Mother Superior on her years at Mundelein. The book was optioned for a Columbia Pictures film and became the 1966 hit The Trouble with Angels. Set in an all-girls’ Catholic boarding school run by an order of nuns, the novel and film follow the antics of two high-spirited students and their coming of age under the wise guidance of a no-nonsense Mother Superior.

The film’s Midwest debut took place at the Granada Theatre in Rogers Park. Mundelein hosted the film’s stars Rosalind Russell, Hayley Mills and Mary Wickes. Reportedly, the character of Mary Clancy (played by Hayley Mills) was based on Trahey’s actual friend, Mary, who later became Sister John Eudes, a Sinsinawa Dominican nun.

The film was so popular that a sequel called Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows followed in 1969. Hayley Mills chose not to reprise her role as Mary Clancy, a progressive postulant known as Sister George in the sequel (Stella Stevens stepped in). Not unlike the sequel in which Sister George and students attend a peace rally. Mundelein students embraced 1960s activism when seven BVM sisters and a busload of students traveled to Alabama for the civil rights march on Selma.

Vintage postcard image of Mundelein College.

In 1980, Mundelein celebrated its 50th anniversary with a float in Chicago’s Columbus Day Parade. Mundelein’s Golden Jubilee dinner was attended by Mayor Jane Byrne and Mother Teresa, recipient of the Magnificat Medal. The Mundelein College Skyscraper was also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Enrollment at the Mundelein dropped dramatically in the 1980s. By 1991, the landmark college merged with Loyola University, making it the last four-year women’s college in Illinois at the time.  In December 2007, the City of Chicago designated the building as an official Chicago landmark.

Today, the spirit of Mundelein lives on in the Ann Ida Gannon, BVM, Center for Women and Leadership. Housed in Piper Hall at Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus, the center is dedicated to supporting and strengthening women’s leadership through the Women’s Studies Program; Women and Leadership Archives (where records from Mundelein College are housed); Institute for Women’s Leadership; and other academic programming, research and opportunities for activism. 

After graduating from Mundelein, Jane Trahey went on to become one of the most prominent women in advertising during the 1960s best known for Blackgama’s “What Becomes a Legend Most” advertising campaign, as well as a prolific author. Trahey, a Chicago native who left a lasting impression on American popular culture, died in 2000. Her letters and papers are included in the collection of Women and Leadership Archives.