The Mount Saint John Academy

An empty hallway stretches out into the gloom - A seemingly-perpetual corridor of stone and tile, leading off into a haze of shadows. This is an old and weathered building, one as meandering as it is immense. We are keenly aware of the numerous unseen halls and passages around us, all filled with an uncanny stillness. A stillness that draped every chamber, as well as us. As secluded as this mountaintop property was, the structure was surprisingly alive with noise. A low hum echoed throughout the building, incessant, everywhere. Electricity. A lifeblood that somehow still flowed through its veins, through the building has lingered for a decade without purpose. Or so we thought. In actuality these walls did indeed still serve a purpose, one that we were now a small part of. One which it has made for itself over the years in which it had sat vacant.

As for what that purpose was, it would depend upon the decade.

The heart of the darkness that extended before us was formed in 1906. Long before the branches of classrooms, offices, and halls unfurled themselves across the grounds, this was a home, and it had a name – Hillandale. A proud estate in its day, situated high up on the borderline of Gladstone and Mendham, in New Jersey. Even in a disused state the property remains one of the most beautiful in the region. Constructed by George Rudolf Mosle, a German-born merchant who had created quite a bit of wealth for himself through his sugar trade and shipping enterprises. A business that, just some years later, unraveled with the onset of the First World War. With the danger to trade ships at the time, his firm was forced to abandon their crops overseas, and financial ruin followed shortly thereafter. The estate was sold off in 1919. Afterward, the property exchanged several hands until falling into the possession of the Sisters of St. John the Baptist in 1926.

The sisters founded an orphanage on the property that same year, dubbed 'Villa O'Connor', with the manor serving as housing for both the sisters of the order, as well as the young girls in their care. The boys, however, were housed in converted stables on the property. Though the stables no longer stand today, the tragedy which befell them will forever persist – Late one night in the winter of 1927 a fire swept through the converted stable building. It is rumored that a nun ran from the hilltop orphanage in the dead of night, all the way to the town of Mendham to alert firefighters to the blaze. In the end, three boys were lost to the flames, and two nuns were wounded in their attempts to save them.

Though tragic, the loss did not discourage the sisters in their cause, and the orphanage continued into the late 1930s. Once the sisters closed the orphanage they set about transforming the property yet again, this time into a private school called 'Saint John's School'. The school thrived, and eventually, the old manor could no longer hold the ever-increasing student population. In an endeavor to both modernize and expand the school, two large wings were added to the original manor, extending out on each side of the front entryway like massive wings. The additions dramatically expanded the school and provided corridors of classrooms as well as a sizable chapel that served for worship as well as non-religious ceremonies such as annual graduations.

In 1949 the property had become established enough both in popularity and in physical scope to provide a high school education. With this transition came yet another name change, the one which the grounds would hold its final days – the Mount St. John Academy. It proved a popular institution for generations of students, but like all chapters of a story, it has to end eventually. On June 8, 2008, at 2:00 pm a special mass was held in the chapel, one to mark the official end of the Sisters' ministries on the property, a place they had called home for over 80 years. A short quote from the sisters website perfectly sums up the event - “Following the Mass, alumnae from every decade of the Mount's history gathered on the Convent porch to share memories, tears, and laughter along with coffee and cookies. Classmates gathered in rooms and hallways, residents took one last look at "their bedroom", mementos were gladly given and received.” After that, the sisters scattered, finding new homes and new purposes elsewhere, leaving behind these empty walls.

Not long ago those empty walls fell to plows and heavy machinery, as the mountaintop school was leveled to make way for yet another housing community. Townhouses standing wall-to-wall where once a grand estate stood. History undone to make way for quickly construed rows of plywood and 2x4. We can't say for certain, but it's likely this plan was billed as some abstract form of 'progress' for the long-disused property, but one has to wonder what this kind of progress means, and to whom it serves. Surely it can't truly be considered progress to look upon a property and feel in our collective gut a desperate wish for the past to rise back up and swallow the present.

So, what was the purpose of the abandoned Mount St. John Academy? What was it that the walls were whispering during the decade they were left to decay? They were repeating to us that everything is temporary.

The silence of an abandoned building is always eerie, but it's amplified in a place like Mount Saint John, where you know just how much life once traveled its halls.

The main entrance of the academy, once the front entry of the original mansion which the school was later constructed around.

The chapel was the only place where the silence of the building was appropriate.

One of the few photographs depicting the property in its days as an orphanage. Here nuns supervise children bathing in the sun and getting fresh air.

Within the school most of the fixtures from its days as an orphanage had been removed, but on the uppermost floor still existed a children's washroom, the walls lined with sinks.