The Centennial of Catholic Education in Imperial Calcasieu

The First Hundred Years

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April 23, 1910 is a day long remembered by the people of Lake Charles. It was a day that the heart of the City was burned out in what some call the greatest fire of the decade in Louisiana. The "Great Fire" consumed 109 buildings over an area encompassing two blocks wide by half a mile long. Included were those of the Catholic Church complex on the block bounded by Ryan and Bilbo streets.

The fire was a sort of watershed in the history of the Catholic schools in Lake Charles. Although the leaders in education-both clerical and lay-had done well in establishing a thriving system in the quarter century prior to the disaster, it was the years that followed that a really first-class system of church-oriented education emerged. The Catholic School system resplendently rose from its ashes.

FOR LOUISIANA LOVERS