Allentown’s Sacred Heart school destroyed by fire won’t be rebuilt. $1 million scholarship fund set aside for displaced students

Sacred Heart, the 115-year-old Allentown Catholic school heavily damaged in a June 10 fire, will be demolished and not rebuilt, Diocese of Allentown officials said Friday.

Wooden classroom floors and timber beams in the attic fueled the early-morning, multialarm fire at the school, which offered pre-kindergarten-through-eighth-grade education in the 300 block of North Fourth Street. No one was injured.

The fire insurance settlement has generated $1 million for a scholarship endowment to defray tuition costs for Sacred Heart students, who start classes next week in a temporary building at St. Paul School in the 200 block of West Susquehanna Street, said Brooke Tesche, chancellor of Catholic education for the diocese.

The students will attend St. John Vianney Regional School in the 200 block of North 18th Street for the 2021-22 academic year, while a pre-K program continues elsewhere on Sacred Heart’s campus.

Tesche said Sacred Heart’s operating costs were an increasing burden, adding that the decision not to rebuild came after a review of enrollment trends and projections at Catholic schools in the city.

Morning Call reporter Andrew Scott can be reached at 610-820-6508 or [email protected].

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