The first Jesuit college in the American South, founded 1837 in Louisiana and closed 1922.
St. Charles College was founded on July 31, 1837, by eight Jesuits recruited from the provinces of Paris, Lyon, and Kentucky under the leadership of Fr. Nicolas Point. Archbishop Antoine Blanc of New Orleans championed the establishment, and the college officially opened for classes on January 5, 1838. It became the first Jesuit college in the Southern United States. The school initially educated lay students exclusively and operated as a boarding school, surviving the Civil War as the last college operating in Louisiana west of the Mississippi River.
In 1890, St. Charles College expanded its mission to educate Jesuit scholastics in addition to lay students. Original college buildings were destroyed by fires in 1900 and 1907; the present structure was constructed in 1909. Declining enrollment in the early twentieth century, as students increasingly chose state schools, led to the college's permanent closure in 1922. The Jesuit leadership recommended closure of all Southern Jesuit schools except Loyola University New Orleans and Spring Hill College.
Today, the St. Charles College campus continues to function as a Jesuit novitiate for training Jesuits. The Jesuit Spirituality Center was established on the grounds in 1972 to host spiritual retreats. In 2013, the St. Alphonsus Rodrigue Pavilion was added to provide housing for elderly Jesuits. The surviving 1909 structures were listed as contributing properties of the Grand Coteau Historic District in 1979.