MOUNT SAINT MARY COLLEGE was a Roman Catholic college for women founded in 1934 by the Sisters of Mercy of New Hampshire. Its campus was situated on 550 acres in the town of Hooksett, approximately 60 miles northwest of Boston. Due to the increasing trends in coeducation during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, enrollment at the college plummeted from a high of about 500 students to just under 200 prior to the ceasing of operations as a result of accompanying financial difficulties in 1978.
Mount Saint Mary awarded baccalaureate degrees in biology, business, dietetics, early childhood education, elementary education, English, French, history, home economics, mathematics, nursing (in conjunction with Catholic Medical Center in the nearby city of Manchester), secondary education (in accordance with a specific major), social welfare, Spanish and special education. In addition, associate degrees were conferred in business, early childhood education, home economics and social welfare. The college was one of eight founding members of the New Hampshire College and University Council, which today is a twenty three member consortium of two and four year institutions of higher learning in New Hampshire offering such services as cross registration, cultural and recreational cooperation, and interlibrary lending. For many years, Mount Saint Mary was regarded as the sister school of the formerly all male Saint Anselm College in Manchester, and the two institutions shared particularly close academic and extracurricular ties.
The campus was dominated by the imposing Mercy Hall, a five level (four above ground, one below) mansion once belonging to the prominent Galt family, and purchased in 1909 by the Sisters of Mercy to become the new home of what was then a preparatory academy for girls. Throughout the entire history of the college, Mercy Hall housed nearly all academic and administrative facilities, though a separate library (McAuley Library) was constructed in the 1960s. The building also contained auditoriums of various sizes, an elegant ballroom, a chapel, a dining hall and a gymnasium, as well as dormitory facilities for resident students. Due to the increase of enrollment in the late 1950s and early 1960s, an additional resident student complex featuring three dormitory buildings interconnected to a student center was constructed. An attractive turn of the century style private home located at the northwest edge of campus served as the residence for the Sisters of Mercy. Along with a few auxiliary structures, a total of about ten buildings comprised the entire Mount Saint Mary campus. The total collections within McAuley Library would reach a high of about 40,000 volumes and 400 periodical subscriptions.
By the early 1970s, it became apparent that the college faced a most difficult decision in terms of either admitting male students or remaining a single sex institution, though the latter choice clearly decreased the chances for survival. Two other four year Catholic institutions for women in the state, Notre Dame College in Manchester and Rivier College in Nashua, compromised by admitting men into their graduate programs and evening-weekend undergraduate programs, but Mount Saint Mary was strictly an undergraduate college with degree programs offered only in the traditional day session. By the middle 1970s, both Dartmouth College and Saint Anselm College, predominantly male institutions, had adopted fully coeducational policies. Rather than abandoning its mission to educate only women in a full time and traditional context, Mount Saint Mary closed its doors in 1978 after forty four years of existence.
At one point, Mount Saint Mary was one of seven all female institutions of higher learning in New Hampshire. Eventually, both Notre Dame and Rivier colleges became fully coeducational, though this did not spare Notre Dame from ceasing operations in 2002. Colby Sawyer College in New London, a four year private institution, has also become fully coeducational. Ironically, Castle College in Windham, a two year institution also administered by the Sisters of Mercy, closed its doors in 1999. Pierce College for Women in Concord, and Stoneleigh College in Rye, both also two year institutions, are no longer in existence. Thus, the number of all female institutions of higher education in New Hampshire has dwindled from seven to zero, and only two of the original seven, Colby Sawyer and Rivier, remain in existence.
Following the closing of Mount Saint Mary, its grounds were purchased in 1981 to serve as the north campus of New Hampshire College (now Southern New Hampshire University), a private institution in Manchester. The north campus served as the home of all graduate programs offered by New Hampshire College, as well as the undergraduate program in human services and the English as a Second Language program for international students. However, the decision was made by the early 1990s to consolidate all programs at the soon to be expanded main campus in Manchester, and the Mount Saint Mary property was once again put up for sale. Following its purchase by private developers, the campus has undergone a notable transformation. Mercy Hall is now a luxury apartment complex, and is named symbolically the Mount Saint Mary Apartments. McAuley Library presently serves as the public library for the town of Hooksett, the former Sisters of Mercy residence is once again a privately owned home, and one of the auxiliary buildings is currently a day care and early childhood learning center. The student center-dormitories complex fell into a state of disrepair and neglect, and has since been demolished.
It remains speculative as to whether Mount Saint Mary could have sustained itself by becoming coeducational as well as expanding and innovating its academic offerings. Unlike Notre Dame College in Manchester, whose campus was hemmed in by private homes in the middle of a suburban residential area with no room to expand, Mount Saint Mary had an abundance of property with which to work, and could even have sold off some of the vast and unused acres as a means of improving its finances. The example of Rivier College, which chose to not only become coeducational but to expand beyond liberal arts and teacher education into the realms of business, communications, health sciences and technology, showed how a school with a similar background as Mount Saint Mary could reinvent itself and survive. On the other hand, in contrast to Notre Dame and Rivier, which were long viewed as grittier institutions founded by less prestigious Catholic orders seeking to teach the daughters of local working class families, Mount Saint Mary was established by the Sisters of Mercy, often compared to their Jesuit male counterparts as the premier educators in the Catholic world, and who focused their efforts on young women mostly from upper middle class families primarily in the metropolitan Boston area. This mindset of gentility and tradition would ultimately exercise a major role in the college choosing to become defunct rather than to compromise its stated mission of single sex education within a classical context.