Seton Hill

Seton Hill brings a small-scale rowhouse neighborhood around a larger green space: St. Mary’s Park. North Paca Street and the surviving buildings of the former seminary campus connect the residential streets with a history of religious education, migration and community service.

A seminary became the park’s setting

St. Mary’s Spiritual Center and Historic Site traces its origins to the Sulpician priests who arrived from France in 1791 to establish a seminary. The Paca Street campus later served generations of students before the seminary program moved to its present north Baltimore location. Much of the old campus became a public park.

The Historic Seminary Chapel and Mother Seton House remain. The site’s history connects Elizabeth Ann Seton with a girls’ boarding school and her early religious vows here, before she moved her community to Emmitsburg. The neighborhood name therefore points to a specific period in her life, rather than to the location of all her later work.

Black Catholic history is part of the same place

The lower chapel also served a Black Catholic community. The site’s account connects Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange and Father James Hector Joubert with the formation of the Oblate Sisters of Providence. Their educational and religious work adds another essential strand to the campus story.

The Seton Hill Association’s park history places these surviving structures within the green space created after the larger institutional buildings were removed. The open ground and older buildings represent successive uses of the land.

Neighbors maintain the everyday setting

The neighborhood association describes ongoing tree planting, cleanups and gardening alongside its preservation work. Nineteenth-century brick houses provide the residential frame for those efforts. The park is shared civic space, while chapel and house visits have their own arrangements through the historic-site operator.