It didn’t take much to impress the high school co-ed in 1922. Sharing a building with elementary students in East Chicago, these Jazz Age adolescents from some of the best families in Northwest Indiana were amazed by the towering bricks and broad wooden doors of the new beautiful building on the corner of Hoffman Street and White Oak Avenue. This was Catholic Central.

Congressmen, war heroes, athletes, and journalists were just some of those who graduated from Catholic Central and eventually Bishop Noll. In these walls, a tradition was kept alive by the students who attended.

But after close to 100 years of being a Hammond icon, the A-wing of Bishop Noll is coming down this summer.

“There are a lot of people who have fond memories of that building and I am one of them when I was here, but the memories I have will not go away. I will still have the memories,” said Mr. Paul Mullaney, Bishop Noll president. “The past is important to us because we have a rich history. We have to set the table for future progress.”

Despite the grandeur of the A-Wing, it has not been used in over 10 years. According to Mullaney, the A-wing has unfixable problems that would only be able to be covered up. In the 2000s, all academics were moved into the newer building of Bishop Noll, leaving the original building as storage and rental use.

“It has character, but it’s prone to broken windows. There are many problems, and those problems grow older. You can build something new with character,” said Mullaney.

With enrollment being at a 13 year high, it is not going up significantly. Enrollment is at a steady growth with adding 14 more students this year than the previous year.

“Even though enrollment is growing, we have room for more students,” Mullaney said. “We know from a study from the early 2000s that we can hold an enrollment of 600, [so] we are talking 6 or 7 years before [reaching] 600, or maybe more than that. By the time we would reach that capacity, the A-wing would have been sitting dormant for two decades. It’s just sitting there taking up space that could be used for other things.” Administration has talked about leaving space to build a new wing if needed in the future.

“We have pictures and memories, and maybe some of those features can be preserved in a new building,” Mullany said. “The memories don’t go away. We will probably preserve some bricks that alumni can purchase that can be used to build up building funds.”

Building funds are not built into the budget set for the year, so all funds would come from outside sources, which includes different means of fundraising.

“We are anticipating and planning to move forward with a capital campaign, and working with  some companies to counsel us on a feasibility study to go forward with the capital campaign, the goal would be to raise major money,” Mullaney said. “We would begin to figure out all of our needs that haven’t been identified yet that,we need to move forward– some to benefit students and some to benefit teachers.”

Although the demolition of the A-wing has been planned for this summer, a timeline for future construction has not been set yet.

“In a perfect world I would like to see all of this accomplished before 2021 because we celebrate our centennial, and we plan on having a big gala. At that point we hope to have a lot to celebrate., most importantly to celebrate 100 years of educating young men and women with a Christ-centered top notch high school education.”