Father Arnold Damen, SJ

Father Arnold Damen, SJ (1815 - 1890)

Any denizen of Chicago won’t have to go far to come across the name Damen.  It is not only the name of one of Chicago’s longest thoroughfares, running from Andersonville to the south of Bridgeport, but is a stop on nearly all of Chicago’s color-coded el lines. And yet few realize that the man behind the name was a pioneer, missionary and visionary responsible for great institutions of learning and spearheading the long and distinguished Jesuit presence in Chicago.

Arnold Damen was born in the Brabant province of the Netherlands in 1815 when the tiny kingdom was no longer sending ships, explorers and traders throughout the world but thousands of men and women religious, priests and missionaries. When Damen came to the United States it was as a young Jesuit novice with the intention of studying for the priesthood at the novitiate in Florrisant, Missouri. Stationed for a time at Saint Louis after his ordination, Fr. Damen was reassigned to Chicago to establish the Jesuit presence in the growing city on the lake. Chicago was quickly growing into a hub of trade, commerce as well as a destination point for thousands of European immigrants looking for work for themselves and education for their children.

In 1857 Fr. Damen arrived in Chicago and began laying the foundations for Ignatius College Prep to the south and west of the city on what is today Roosevelt Road. Chartered as an all-male school, Ignatius eventually grew into what is today the Loyola University of Chicago with campuses in the city and on the north side in Rogers Park. All institutions survive and today as coeducational and powerful centers of learning and formation.

What else is not widely known is that Fr. Damen is responsible for one of the most famous miracles in Chicago history. When the city caught fire in October 1871 the blaze, which started right around the corner on DeKoven Street, began moving toward the school building and newly constructed church. Fr. Damen, away in New York at the time, wired back that seven candles should immediately be lit in front of the icon of the Mother of Perpetual Help that hung in the church. The fire, fueled by wooden buildings and the prairie grass around the school, immediately shifted directions thus sparing the buildings and making them one of the few buildings of Old Chicago to survive the Great Fire of 1871.

The icon of the Virgin still hangs and the seven candles (now electrified) still burn.