The Cabin in Maryglade

By Sister Margaret Clarke  •  Pathways • Fall 2009

The final parcel of land purchased by the Sisters in 1907 which completed the quarter-section on the Kenwood site was the southwest corner of the campus, containing the quarry and the woods known as Maryglade.  The origin of the cabin there was described by Sister Scholastica Bush in her Community annals of 1945.  She reports: “I was talking with Sister Leona [Michlitch], treasurer of the Community for over twenty years.  She told me that for some years we paid taxes on the sections of the campus on which there was neither a building nor a landscaped park nor a physical education lay-out.  This came to a few thousand dollars.  So to get Maryglade tax-exempt, we put the log cabin there.  That cabin had been on a piece of property we inherited from Sister Gerard [Nolan]‘s parents out a mile and a half beyond the Catholic cemetery.  Our men took the cabin down and brought it here and set it up, St. Mary’s [Hospital] standing the expense of the building and equipping of it.  With that building erected there, that forty was tax exempt.”

The cabin in its prime		The Maryglade woods
The cabin was a woodsy retreat for both Sisters and college students.  In the beginning it had glassed and screened windows, comfortable wicker furniture, drapes, rugs, and tableware for outdoor picnics.  The earliest dated photo is from 1931, but the actual construction of the cabin may have been a few years earlier.  As time passed, the cabin became a magnet for neighborhood adolescent boys, and the furnishings had to be removed as windows were broken.  For several years it stood as an empty shelter, then one night it was set on fire and burned to the ground, and for several more years only the stone fireplace and cement slab remained.  Now even the fireplace is gone.		Postulants on a picnic at the cabin in 1946.

In the days when there were large numbers of young Sisters, the surrounding area was carefully tended: a stone “bridge” was constructed over a (mostly nonexistent) stream, native plants were transplanted into garden beds, and the shrine to Our Lady of Victory was built. Remnants of all of these can still be seen by anyone who takes the path through the woods to the Valley overlook.

Photos courtesy of  Monastery Archives.