The History of St. Joseph Commercial High School
Joliet (population 129,519) is located in northeastern Illinois in west-central Will County. In fact, is the county seat of Will County and spills over into Kendall County to the west. Joliet was platted in 1834 and officially incorporated in 1852. After much discussion over the town’s early name (it was known as Juliet from 1834 to 1845), Joliet was settled upon to honor Louis Joliet, famous explorer who first viewed the area in 1673. A number of routes have served as ways to reach Joliet, including the legendary Route 66, which was replaced by Interstate 55, along with Interstate 80, US Routes 6, 30, 45, 52, and Illinois Routes 7, 53, and 171. The rail service has been provided by the Elgin, Joliet, and Eastern (EJE) RR, along with the AT & SF RR, & the former Rock Island RR, which shut down in 1980. Daily commuter service to Chicago is offered by Metra (short for Metropolitan Train Service) from the Regional Transportation Authority based in Chicago. The Des Plaines River also flows thru the heart of Joliet, and the community also served as a primary stop on the Illinois & Michigan Canal. St. Joseph Commercial High School was opened in September 1914 by the Rev. John Krajnec on Scott Street near Chicago Street on the city’s east side by the Des Plaines River as a two-year commercial high school with nine co-ed students enrolled. The school’s beginning coincided with the opening of a new school building for grade school students of the parish, which still stands today. St. Joseph first opened a grade school in 1895 and is located in a neighborhood that was the home of many Slovenian immigrants. High school courses for the school were held in the building pictured above, on the second floor in the rooms to the left.
The School Sisters of St. Francis Mary Immaculate were in charge of the school, which closed in 1919 due to the opening of DeLaSalle High School & the renaming of Providence High School (from St. Mary’s) in order to allow those students in the neighborhood to pursue a Catholic education at a four-year academic high school. FACTS ABOUT JOLIET ST. JOSEPH COMMERCIAL HIGH SCHOOL Year opened: 1914 Year closed: 1919 |
||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|