The Independent-Record from Helena, Montana • 21

www.helenair.com Sunday, December 15, 2002 Page, 2C Independent Record Endangered: 'A terrible loss' Saint Charles Hall at Carroll College. concerned. While the church admits it has a responsibility to the community, along with the core of Helena, it also has visions for the future. The school's role in that future remains undecided. One vision being explored by the church, dubbed "Cathedral Square," would see the school razed, allowing the diocese to construct a super plaza.

The new plaza would include underground parking, two two-story buildings, and a garden courtyard, linked by a skywalk with the north entrance of the cathedral. "Cathedral Square is a grand vision," Gloege admitted. "I don't know how practical it would be to do it." Any action the church might take, whether its preserving the old school or razing it and building new, is still years away. Selling the old school to a third party isn't an option for the diocese, either. The cathedral and surrounding property, which includes St.

Kelena School, is encircled by private homes, limiting any plans the church might have to expand. It also makes the property that much more valuable. "We need the space," Gloege said. "To sell it to a third party that would probably not work for us." Gloege said that maintaining St. Helena Cathedral is now the priority and renovation work there is ongoing.

As for the school, despite its neglected state, Gloege said, it does have historical value. It's one point on which the parish and MPA agree. "People really do love their history here," Jiusto said. "Sometimes it's just a matter of helping them find the solutions and to look for options." Jiusto said the parish has invited MPA to its fifth visioning committee meeting, planned for a date to be announced in January. With any luck, Jiusto said, the church and MPA will find a way to save the old school.

Carroll's hill might have been the Capitol site continued from 1C organized a visioning committee to begin discussing the school's ultimate fate. DT Architecture was hired to investigate remedies. Four parish-wide meetings were held. A fifth meeting is planned for January. "Some people want to save the school at any cost and some don't want to," Gloege said.

"There was a small contingent that came to those parish meetings that wanted to save it, but there wasn't a huge outcry to save the building." Chere Jiusto, the executive director of the Montana Preservation Alliance, said many still hope to see the school preserved as part of the city and the church's history. Despite the structure's problems, she believes renovation is possible. Jiusto said the building is one of the finest examples of neoclassical architecture in the state, standing testimony to a time when the Roman Catholic Church provided many of the state's social services in place of government. "The school has been a candidate for demolition for a number of years now," Jiusto said. "It's just a terrible loss each time a building like that goes down, and we'd like to see it given more consideration." The MPA has succeeded in saving numerous sites from certain demise.

Last year, five of the six sites that made the preservation's list were saved. MPA isn't ready to let the old school slip between its fingers. As a result, MPA has already sent engineering reports to prominent Northwest architects Jim McDonald, who helped restore the Capitol and the Old Faithful Inn, and Lome McConachie, who specializes in restoring old schools in Seattle. "Both said there are innovative ways to achieve seismic stability that can likely address the needs of that building," Jiusto said. "That building, located where it is, is a valuable structure.

It's worth far more than the land it stands on." Value is one of the questions facing the parish where the school and its property are Dennis McCahon Carroll College sits on a peculiar bump. It has the usual shape for a Helena hill a steep north slope and a long gentle south slope but it's made of an entirely different kind of rock. Most of our hills are made of ancient sedimentary layers, stacked and faulted through and tilted south, but Carroll sits on a much younger igneous stock the stub of a pipe of once molten How Helena gat that way built early in Helena's placer-camp daysb keep watch over the Benton Trail, which passed the bump where Benton Avenue passes today. More recently yet, sometime in the lat'e 1870s or early 1880s, the bump the name by which some people still call.it Capitol Hill. Helena had become the Territorial Capitol in 1874 and had begun to, dream big about its future.

The site of tht old abandoned lookout was now regarded as a particularly noble building site, clearly suited for a great edifice of some sort, the obvious site for the future state Capitol Building. It was indeed one of seven sites considered when the time finally came in 1895 (The others, besides the one chosen, were two at the base of Mount Helena and thre; more in the triangle bounded by Rodney Eleventh and Helena Avenue). When it wasn't chosen, the hill's owners' nonetheless let it be known that they wouldn't part with Their noble bump except for', some purpose worthy of it. They held out for a dozen years, until 1908, when Bishop-Carroll and the Diocese of Helena came along with plans for Mount Saint Charles College (the name was changed to honor the energetic Bishop many years later). Albert O.

Von Herbulis, the same architect who designed the Cathedral of Saint Helena, drew up plans for what's now ther central block of Saint Charles hall. Set -u squarely on top of the hill, it's built mostly More ChRRQLL, page 4C Reporter Martin Kidston can be reached at 447-4086, or by e-mail at mkidstonhelenair.com History: Name changed in '60s stuff. Maybe it fed a volcano, or maybe it never reached the surface, but it was molten only about 70 or 80 millon years ago. That's pretty recent, when compared with the age of the rock it pipes through. It comes up through the Proterozoic Helena dolomite layer, the bottom of our local sedi mentary stack, the oldest rock in town.

We think the Helena dolomite had already solidified on a shallow equatorial seafloor about 1.3 billion years earlier. Much more recently, there were probably Ponderosa pines scattered across the top of Carroll's bump when Bob Stanley and his partners rode past on the way to their gold strike in July 1864. Any pines were soon cut, however, to build the first structure known to have been placed up there a fortified lookout, 1 969 school year. Hunthausen cited increasing financial difficulties as the major reason. Helena Central High School now houses the Cathedral of St.

Helena Parish, while the Bishop Gilmore School has sat empty for more than 20 years, its future riding on a decision by the parish. continued from 1C to St Helena School. The name St. Helena School was changed in the 1960s to Bishop Gilmore School. But in 1969, Bishop Raymond Hunthausen announced that both Helena Central High School and Bishop Gilmore School would close at the end of the Word: Parish needs parking continued from 1C roughly 150 spaces could be provided on two levels of underground parking, with 20 more spaces providing handicap and quick stop The parish has also stated a need for parking at grade on the cathedral's north more parking.

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