This building opened with Marygrove College and was dedicated Nov. 10, 1927.

It was designed by architect Oscar D. Bohlen of the Indianapolis-based firm of D.A. Bohlen & Sons.

Its cornerstone was placed Sept. 8, 1925.

On June 12, 2019, Marygrove announced that it would permanently close at the end of the 2019 fall semester. The college had operated in Detroit for 92 years.

At the time, Marygrove was operating only a graduate program, having ended its undergraduate program two years earlier. With $25 million in debt, a $20 million operating budget and 491 undergraduate students, the college's finances weren't sustainable, Marygrove President Elizabeth Burns told the Free Press in 2018.

A history of Marygrove College from the college's website:

The history of Marygrove does not begin with 1927 or the city of Detroit, but with 1845 and the town of Monroe. On November 10, 1845, three women formally began a religious congregation of Catholic nuns, today known as the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, or IHMs. The three women came to Monroe at the invitation of a young Belgian missionary priest, Father Louis Florent Gillet.

One of the women, Theresa Maxis, was named the first leader of the new community. A woman of color of Haitian origin, she had formerly served as president of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, a community of black Catholic women in Baltimore, Maryland. When she arrived in Monroe, she began almost immediately to develop a school for women.

St. Mary AcademyOn Christmas day of 1845, a notice appeared in the Monroe Advocate announcing the opening of a "Young Ladies Academy" offering a course of study that included French and English grammar, arithmetic, mythology, bookkeeping, needlework, beadwork, tapestry, worsted flowers, and music. By January 15, 1846, St. Mary Academy welcomed its first students.

That beginning was followed by the opening of parochial schools throughout Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, but the Academy remained the center of innovation and progress in the IHM educational system.

Marygrove was the direct descendant of the original St. Mary Academy. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Academy had begun to offer college-level courses and by 1905 the Sisters had built a separate St. Mary College. In 1910 the State of Michigan empowered the college to grant degrees, and in 1914, the State Department of Education authorized it to grant teaching certificates. Those original charters were in effect at Marygrove throughout its existence.

In the early 1920s, it became apparent to the IHM Congregation and to Church leaders in Detroit that the college was outgrowing its buildings and that Detroit would be a more appropriate site for a new campus. Mother Domitilla Donohue agreed with Detroit's bishop Michael Gallagher that moving the college to the city would give more women an opportunity for higher education, and that the College would have a larger field of influence in Detroit. She also believed, with him, that the College could itself be a monument to the city of Detroit. Accordingly, in March, 1922, for $241,000, Mother Domitilla purchased as the site of the new St. Mary College an 80-acre wooded tract in a developing area of northwest Detroit.

The purchase price of the land, however, exhausted the money that had been set aside to build the new campus in Monroe, so the Congregation launched a Building Campaign Fund in 1923, culminating in a week-long Marygrove Festival at the Arena Gardens in Detroit. With the help of the St. Mary Alumnae Association, Michigan parishes, graduates of IHM schools, and Detroit business leaders, the Festival alone raised $101,000, but the total campaign fund itself could not match the cost of the new buildings. So, in an act of courage, faith, or sheer bravado difficult to imagine today, Mother Domitilla and her governing council indebted the IHM Congregation for the $4 million necessary to build and equip the College.

The new site suggested a new name, and in 1925, with the laying of the cornerstone of the present Liberal Arts Building, St. Mary College became Marygrove College. The gates of the Detroit campus opened in September 1927, welcoming 287 students, 100 of whom were sophomores, juniors, or seniors.

The first class of Marygrove students was greeted by the first lay president of a Catholic women's college in the U.S., Dr. George Hermann Derry. Dr. Derry was an educator, a scholar, a philosopher, and a lecturer with an international reputation who had been educated at the Catholic University of Paris. His previous experience included chairing the political science department at Bryn Mawr and the philosophy department at Marquette University.

Dr. and Mrs. Derry lived with their three children in the president's house on campus (now Hartman Hall), often entertaining intellectual figures of international importance. Dr. Derry frequently invited Marygrove undergraduates to meet the guests as part of the students' social and cultural development.

Mother Domitilla appointed Dr. Derry the first president of the new college because his philosophy of education matched the Congregation's own vision of scholarly excellence, service to the professions, and commitment to social justice. In particular, the Congregation charged Dr. Derry with the task of building a curriculum that would enable the professional education of women, many of whom would be the first in their families to obtain a college degree.

The system of education that Dr. Derry devised—and the IHM faculty shaped—derived from a theory of education based on the liberal arts. An art, according to Dr. Derry, was the right way of doing all things.

The Marygrove Idea, as this philosophy came to be known to generations of alumnae, encouraged Marygrove women to develop personal power in themselves, to be driving forces in their chosen fields, to act consciously on their own values, and to be proficient in what Dr. Derry considered the seven liberal arts:

• the art of behavior before God
• the art of behavior within society among persons
• the art of expression
• the art of reasoning
• the art of historical realization
• the art of leisure
• the art of making a living
• The test of a college, Dr. Derry believed, was what its graduates were and could do.

Certainly one woman who embodied what the Marygrove woman ought to be was Sister Honora Jack, IHM, president of the College for 24 years, from 1937 to 1961. Her history at Marygrove began in 1927 as the first English professor, and she served as dean of the college from 1930 to 1937.

Under her direction, the curriculum emphasized speaking and writing skills, critical thinking, and collaborative and interdisciplinary learning. In what Sister Honora called a system of "planned integration" and today's educators would describe as a series of synthesizing experiences, Marygrove students moved through a course of study that included a freshman orientation, a sophomore open-forum, and junior-senior seminars. These classes required students to thoroughly research and write a paper, then present it orally, discuss it, and defend it in the company of students and faculty from several disciplines. So that Marygrove women would move naturally into what Sister Honora thought of as "the normal work-life of the world," she inaugurated an academic requirement of "professional contacts." Each department required its students to attend a certain number of professional meetings related to the major field each semester. The tradition of professional contacts remained in place in several of Marygrove's academic departments for decades.

Sister Honora's educational vision was recognized in 1943 when the Association of American Universities, an association of graduate schools, placed Marygrove on the approved list. This was the highest possible rating for an undergraduate institution at the time. In 1947, the American Association of University Women accepted Marygrove as a corporate member.

Student involvement in community service was also an important educational value for Sister Honora, so important that she created the staff position of director of social action. The director's chief function was to provide direction, counseling, and supervision of students in volunteer activities, ranging from hospitals to schools to social service agencies. By the early 1950s, two-thirds of Marygrove students were involved in volunteer service and the College's program received several national awards.

In the late 1950s, Sister Honora also formed a lay board, which met as an advisory group to the president, a forerunner of the Marygrove Board of Trustees. At the time, it was considered progressive to involve lay people in policy making at a Catholic religious institution.

When Marygrove celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1960, Sister Honora launched a major development drive for the construction of the new library wing. She said at the time, "We have not asked for gifts, but for investment. And no investment brings higher interest in human influence than does the investment in the education of women."

The assertive presidency of Sister Mary Emil Penet, IHM, from 1961 to 1968, brought national attention to the College, due in great measure to Sister Mary Emil's own adamant belief in the education of women. In the early 1950s, she had played a key role in promoting the highest possible academic standards for teaching nuns throughout the United States, an idea not always popular in official Church circles when the sisters temporarily left teaching posts to attend graduate schools across the country.

Committed to social reform and to educational justice, Sister Mary Emil undertook two initiatives that influenced Marygrove from that day forward. One was Marygrove's early membership in the Fitzgerald Community Council, a neighborhood organization committed to integrating the northwest Detroit area. On October 8, 1963, she said in a press conference: "The acid test of our sincerity in banding together in this Community Council is whether in our heart of hearts we ever would want a lily-white neighborhood here if we could have it. Marygrove would not want it."

Sister Mary Emil's other initiative was her key leadership role in winning legislative support for the Michigan Tuition Grant Program. This program, begun in 1966, was the first to provide state grant money to students who might not otherwise be able to afford a private Michigan college. Thousands of Marygrove students directly benefited by Sister Mary Emil's vision.

In terms of curriculum, Sister Mary Emil's legacy to the College included two major revisions in the general education program, each of which grew from her realization that the world at the end of the 20th century would be increasingly interdependent and multicultural.

Marygrove's social science sequence offered Marygrove students the tools for critically analyzing our social system from the perspectives of economics, sociology, political science, and psychology. It is a sequence that embodied the College's and the IHM Congregation's shared commitment to action on behalf of justice. Sister Mary Emil was also the architect of a required 16-credit-hour sequence of courses in the humanities that emphasized world cultures, an idea subsequently implemented in colleges across the country.

Marygrove's growing responsiveness to the Detroit community took on new and deeper dimensions in 1967 after the urban rebellion in Detroit. Recognizing Marygrove's own insularity, Interim President Sister Jane Mary Howard, IHM, initiated "68 for '68"— a recruitment program designed to attract 68 additional African-American students for the fall 1968 term. It included offering one scholarship to a senior from every public high school in Detroit, and the program also reached into the parochial schools of both Detroit and Philadelphia. Within a year, 25 percent of the 260 first-year students were African-American, more closely reflecting the changing demographics of the metropolitan area and of Marygrove's own neighborhood.

For a three-year period in the late sixties and early seventies, under the presidency of Dr. Arthur Brown, the first lay president since Dr. Derry and the first Marygrove president elected by a lay board of trustees, Marygrove initiated a series of changes that marked it as a flexible urban institution open to change. In addition to inviting students to join the administrative processes and to participate in curricular decisions, the College instituted the Division of Continuing Education and Community Service, an educational outreach and service program that drew thousands of children and adults to the campus. The College extended the Marygrove mission by including men, more transfer students, and associate degree candidates in the student body.

After a decade of almost uninterrupted change, the Board of Trustees appointed Dr. Raymond Fleck to the presidency in 1972. Dr. Fleck presided over the College in a time of great economic and financial difficulty, both for the College itself and for the city and state. Nonetheless, under his administration, Marygrove rededicated itself to the Detroit community by firmly rejecting recommendations that it relocate to the suburbs. In addition, the College community revised, for the first time since 1953, Marygrove's mission statement, identifying competence, compassion, and commitment as essential goals of the institution itself and of its students. Those goals remained in place through the early part of the 21st century.

In 1980, Dr. John E. Shay, Jr., assumed the presidency after a twenty-year career in student affairs at the College of the Holy Cross and the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Shay's administration saw the institution of aggressive financial management practices, major federal and state grant support, dramatic growth in the College's continuing education programs, creation of the Allied Health unit, the inauguration of the Master in the Art of Teaching degree, and a significant upswing in enrollment.

Under Dr. Shay's leadership, Marygrove's strong Board of Trustees began to reflect more truly the Detroit community, and the College renewed and strengthened its ties with the IHM Congregation. In addition, Marygrove enjoyed fifteen years of balanced budgets, no significant debt, a successful $7.5 million capital campaign, and the launching of the $21-million 21st Century Initiative — a fund-raising effort designed to position the College for the new millennium.

Following Dr. Shay's retirement in 1997, Marygrove's longstanding executive vice president, Sister Andrea Lee, IHM, served as interim president before her appointment to the presidency of the College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, Minnesota.

In 1998, the Marygrove College Board of Trustees appointed Dr. Glenda D. Price, former provost of Spelman College, Atlanta, as Marygrove's seventh president. Dr. Price was the first African-American woman to hold the Marygrove presidency.

Dr. Price immediately implemented the Griots program, an initiative to increase the number of African-American male teachers in metro Detroit school systems, an idea that had been proposed in Dr. Shay's administration. With significant increased funding from major local and regional foundations, she also initiated, in rapid order, study abroad, honors, and research assistant programs; Onstage!, an arts education outreach effort directed to Detroit children and youth; "Defining Detroit," an acclaimed series of multidisciplinary presentations in honor of Detroit's 300th anniversary, which evolved into the Institute for Detroit Studies; an annual Academic Colloquium; affiliation with the Faculty Resource Network at NYU and the National Science Foundation's Project Kaleidoscope; and two additional institutes: the Institute of Music and Dance and the Women's Leadership Institute. Because of President Price's deep involvement in the Detroit civic and corporate communities, the College was able to establish new programmatic partnerships with the Detroit Public Schools, The Skillman Foundation, University of Detroit Mercy, and Lawrence Technological University. Men's and women's basketball teams took to the courts, and new strategies to strengthen Marygrove's relationship with alumni won national foundation support.

During her administration, Marygrove set new strategic goals, developed a campus master plan, and began implementing an ambitious information technology plan. The College won support for the $3 million renovation and full upgrade of the Marygrove Theatre, which re-opened on Founders Day, November 10, 2002, the 75th anniversary of Marygrove College in the City of Detroit. A large federal grant allowed the mathematics and science division to begin the complete modernization of its facilities, including new faculty-student research labs, state-of-the-art smart classrooms, and first-rate teaching laboratories. Renewal of the campus infrastructure, particularly in the area of technology, was matched by an equally strong record of faculty research and publications, each positioning Marygrove for growth in the 21st century.

In the 2006-07 academic year, Dr. David J. Fike (2006-15), former Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty at Holy Names College in Oakland, Calif., became the College's eighth president. The previous year, as provost, Dr. Fike, facilitated a campus-wide process to interpret Marygrove's distinctive history and mission in the context of 21st century Detroit. Under the resulting framework, known as "fostering urban leadership," the College community worked to develop in students the capacity for leadership in urban communities and to build the institution's capacity for collaboration with its surrounding neighborhood. The urban leadership focus inspired curricular innovations and co-curricular projects, especially after a $1.5 million W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant enabled the College's BOLD (Building Our Leadership in Detroit) initiative. University of Michigan researchers determined that Marygrove's approach to student leadership development – infused as iterative experiences for all undergraduate students regardless of their chosen majors – was unique among American colleges.

Under President Fike, the number and size of individual alumni gifts increased despite one of the nation's deepest economic downturns. A major gift from 1929 alumna Elizabeth Clinton Keenan led, among other things, to the renovation of the Madame Cadillac building's fountain courtyard. The College also added a soccer field and a four-hole short golf course, and purchased the former Immaculata High School building to provide space for expanding programs and community engagement initiatives. In 2009, the IHM Sisters transferred ownership of the campus and its buildings to the College. During Fike's presidency, undergraduate enrollment grew: full-time and traditional-aged student populations more than doubled, and enrollment in the Natural Sciences tripled, spurred by a National Institute of Health grant to Detroit's higher education institutions encouraging students from underrepresented backgrounds to engage in biomedical research. In response to student demand, the College expanded its residence hall space. Marygrove's athletics program added cross-country, baseball, and track and field; the College advanced to full membership in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics' (NAIA) and the Wolverine Hoosiers Athletic Conference.

Following the economic downturn, President Fike maneuvered the institution over some challenging terrain. Changes in government policy, economic conditions, and the higher education marketplace necessitated difficult and painful reductions in staffing and compensation. Recognizing the challenges facing small private institutions, Marygrove co-founded a national coalition of independent colleges and universities dedicated to serving low-income and first-generation college students. President Fike's leadership in this effort and on issues like immigration reform helped to elevate Marygrove's voice on the national higher education scene.

In July 2015, following Dr. Fike's return to San Francisco to assume the presidency of Golden Gate University, Dr. James Birge, former president of Franklin Pierce University became interim president of Marygrove College; after a short tenure, he was selected as president of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

In January 2016, Dr. Elizabeth Burns, who had served as interim provost since August 2015, was named ninth President of Marygrove College. She had also served as a Marygrove College board member for 10 years prior to assuming the role of interim provost. Dr. Burns, a 1972 Marygrove alumna, was a medical doctor specializing in family medicine, a professor of family medicine, and president of the Michigan State University Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies before retiring as an Associate Dean at the new WMU Homer Stryker School of Medicine. Dr. Burns discovered that the increased enrollment and campus renovations had come at a significant hidden cost. Debt and a drop in student retention, as well as the demographic changes in the college attending age group, had placed the College at great risk. Dr. Burns aggressively sought to raise revenues and boost enrollment while engaging in strict resource management. Working to develop a turn-around plan, she also sought to develop a vision for the future of the College and the campus, using the campus as an educational resource for the City. Drawing on her own lifelong connection with the College, she continued to promote its mission, its foundational IHM principles, and its distinctive citizen leadership vision.

However, the economic environment, declining numbers of undergraduate students, and persistent financial woes, including a significant debt burden, forced the closure of Marygrove's undergraduate programs at the end of 2017. The Corporate Board, comprised of the Marygrove College Board of Trustees and the IHM Leadership Council, decided to keep the graduate programs intact, believing that these programs would be sustainable and help the College regain its fiscal footing. Despite the optimism for this model, further enrollment challenges developed as a result of the Higher Learning Commission's decision to place the College under the "show cause" process, to which the College successfully responded. By July of 2018, the College was able to recruit students without the "show cause" disclaimer. Planning for the future of the College and the campus continued.

In the shadows of that HLC decision, the Marygrove Conservancy was formed by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Marygrove College, and The Kresge Foundation in the fall of 2017, and in February of 2018, the campus and buildings were sold to the Conservancy, thus removing some of the debt burden and ushering in a new hope for the campus. But persistent fiscal struggles coupled with low enrollment despite a new marketing campaign launched in 2019, led the Corporate Board to another milestone decision. After deep deliberation, negotiation, discernment and prayer, the Board voted unanimously in May 2019 to permanently close Marygrove College at the end of 2019.

With the formation of the Marygrove Conservancy, a new vision for the Marygrove College campus was born. A unique P-20 cradle-to-career educational campus was formally announced in the fall of 2018. By the fall of 2019, the partnership of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, The Kresge Foundation and The University of Michigan School of Education had started The School at Marygrove with the founding class of ninth graders. The School at Marygrove will house grades K-12 when fully developed. Additionally, Starfish Family Services initiated an early childhood education program, converting the ground floor of the library into four classrooms for children 0-3 years of age. Construction of a permanent early childhood education center in the east grove on the Marygrove Campus began in November of 2019 with a groundbreaking. The P-20 vision was taking shape with the promise that other community and educational activities would be drawn to the hallowed Marygrove campus, fulfilling its ongoing mission of education.

Marygrove College's educational mission and place in the city of Detroit was born of an early history that seemed to thrive on risk-taking. When Theresa Maxis left her Baltimore community for Monroe in 1845, taking with her only a vision of education and a fierce determination to make a difference, she could not have been certain what limitations her race and gender would impose upon her. Nor could she have entirely imagined where her faith would take her, or what institutions that faith might lead her to create. At Marygrove in the 21st century, however, we know what Theresa Maxis couldn't have known. We can say with certainty that she would have been immensely proud of what her 1845 St. Mary Academy became and of the legacy of its successor, Marygrove College.