Site of Academy of the Incarnate Word

The three sisters who reached Houston in 1873 started more than one school. The Houston house, formed that year from the Victoria community, grew into an independent foundation with its own motherhouse, and it went on to run Our Lady of Perpetual Help Junior College, Bishop Byrne High School in Port Arthur and parish schools. One principal on the plaque's list, Sister M. Sebastian McHugh, wrote the order's Houston history as a 1948 University of Houston thesis, the year the first academy building came down. The plaque stands on private school grounds.

What the plaque says

Site of Academy of the Incarnate Word First permanent Catholic school in Houston. Established by Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament, a religious order founded 1625 in Lyons, France. In 1852, at request of the first bishop of Texas, the Rt. Rev. John M. Odin, the order entered the United States to engage in religious education. The sisters opened their first school in Brownsville in 1853; second in Victoria, 1866; and the third here. Mother M. Gabriel Dillon and two sisters came to Houston in 1873 at request of the Rev. Joseph Querat, to begin teaching young girls in temporary quarters at the old Franciscan monastery on Franklin. By Jan. 3, 1874, their own 3-story edifice was finished. Facing Crawford, it had a courtyard bounded by Capitol and Jackson. Boarding facilities opened in a few months. A State of Texas charter empowered the academy to issue diplomas, beginning in 1878. In 1899, the Exhibition Hall (auditorium) was built. To accommodate growth, another 3-story structure was added, 1905. Original building was replaced in 1948. 200 to 300 pupils annually have learned devotions, arts, and sciences under dedicated tutelage of the sisters, who have watched Houston grow from a small, muddy town into a city of cosmopolitan culture. (1973) (see additional data on back) Principals - Mother M. Gabriel Dillon 1873-1895 Mother M. Magdalen Hickey 1895-1905; 1908-1917 Mother M. Gertrude Binning 1905-1908; 1917-1923 Mother M. Scholastica Cantwell 1923-1926 Sister M. Stanislaus Comerford 1926-1930 Mother M. Angelique O'Mahoney 1930-1932 Sister M. Monica O'Conner 1932-1946 Sister M. Agatha Sheehan 1946-1947 Sister M. Sebastian McHugh 1947-1950 Sister M. Joan Neilon 1950-1951 Sister James Philip Davison 1951-1964 Sister Jean Marie Guokas 1964- . Superiors - Mother M. Gabriel Dillon 1873-1895 Mother M. Magdalen Hickey 1895-1905; 1908-1917 Mother M. Gertrude Binning 1905-1908; 1917-1923; 1926-1929 Mother M. Scholastica Cantwell 1923-1926; 1929-1935; 1941-1944 Mother M. Angelique O'Mahoney 1935-1941; 1944-1950 Mother M. Sebastian McHugh 1950-1960 Sister M. Joseph Fluellen 1960-

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.9 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Emancipation Park — 1.5 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 1.9 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 2.7 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Daughters of the Republic of Texas — steps away
• Site of Old Houston Academy — steps away
• Anderson, Clayton & Co. — 0.2 mi
• M. D. Anderson — 0.2 mi