Benedictine nuns from Chicago took over a financially ailing military school in 1890 and transformed it into a school for young ladies. The three-story east classroom building, now used for the fine arts, still stands amid newer campus structures. Designed in a typical turn-of-the-century institutional mode, the brick building has heavy-hooded, round-topped windows and a mansard roof with pedimented dormers suggestive of the Italianate style and Carpenter's Gothic detailing on the entry porch.