Benedictine Sisters founded Monte Cassino School as a girls' school in 1926, here in midtown Tulsa. Its story begins in 1926, when the Benedictine Sisters founded it as a girls' school and junior college. For decades the campus was more than a neighborhood school: it included a girls' junior college until 1945 and carried a full high school program until 1986.
In the early 1960s Monte Cassino ended its boarding program; the residence hall was repurposed as the new home for the sisters of the St. Joseph Monastery. When the high school closed, a preschool opened and the school shifted to co-education for its middle school students. Nearby, Cascia Hall Preparatory School — once the Catholic boys' school next door — began admitting girls in middle school and high school, effectively taking on Monte Cassino's role as the girls' high school after the two schools had shared some classes in earlier years.
Among those who passed these halls are Frank Keating, who graduated from the middle school in 1958, and actress Jennifer Jones, who finished at the junior college in 1936 before continuing at Northwestern University. Picture Frank Keating and Jennifer Jones once walking these same halls toward Cascia Hall.