SI High gone

05/18/06 - posted by John Martini

St. Ignatius High School disappeared in June 1969 when my class graduated from the Stanyan Street campus -- a grim, 1920s factory-looking building that churned out innumerable cops, firemen, fisherman, politicians, governors, rogues ands priests over the course of its 40+ year existence.

That fall, the school reopened in its new guise as "St Ignatius College Preparatory School" in the Sunset District. The old SI building was turned into an extension of the USF campus.

In 1986 (or was it '87) USF decided to tear down the aging building. I was driving down Turk Street one day and was stunned to see a gigantic crane nibbling away at the now-empty concrete shell of SI.

I watched for several minutes as it gobbled away at Fr. Spohn's third floor physics lab, then moved on to the adjacent Chem Lab, and finally began foraging around the classroom where Mr. Chas Murphy taught us English 101 in fall 1965.

As I watched, I realized that numerous other people, all of them middle-aged men, were also watching the demolition work through the protective cyclone fence. Gazing silently at the demo work, I wondered if was seeing the faces of other former Wildcats who, like me, were witnessing their youth disappear in a pile of busted concrete, rebar and dust.