History of HTS
Timeline
The Sisters of Mercy leave Holy Trinity to staff the newly-established Our Lady of Mercy School in Montgomery County. Holy Trinity Pastor Thomas P. Gavigan, SJ, arranges for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Chestnut Hill, PA to staff Holy Trinity.
The Sisters of St. Joseph decide they cannot provide principals for all the schools they staff; they continue to send three teaching sisters to Holy Trinity, but the school has to find its own lay principal. Thus, Ann Marie Santora (later Crowley) becomes the first lay principal of Holy Trinity School. The main school office, grades 5-8 and the art room move over to the old girls’ high school building and it officially becomes the Upper School. The Early Childhood Program, Grades 1-4 and the library remain in what is then dubbed the Lower School.
A second seventh grade homeroom is added and a second eighth grade homeroom the following year. The second sixth grade homeroom was not added until the late 1980’s.
More than 300 dedicated parishioners raise more than $5 million to “meet the needs of the new millennium…to prepare Holy Trinity for the next century, to support our spiritual growth and our outreach to others.” The restored Trinity Church is renamed the Chapel of St. Ignatius. An expansion of the Parish Center provides more than 30,000 square feet of offices and meeting spaces that serve music classes and school events.
The two school buildings undergo major renovations and some expansions. Elevators and accessible restrooms are added and the entrances are reconfigured. The Upper School Theater (originally the Parish Assembly Hall) is demolished and a new multi-purpose room, Trinity Hall, is added with four additional classrooms above.
HTS celebrates it bicentennial and 200 years as students for others.
With thanks to Betsy Morgan Moyer, who wrote “The History of Holy Trinity School 1818-1993.”