Belvedere owes its origins to the efforts of Fr. John Austin S.J. who opened primary and secondary schools off Fishamble Street in 1750. The Society of Jesus has been active in the area around Hardwicke Street since 1790. They founded St Francis Xavier's College in the disused Poor Clare convent on Hardwicke Street with nine students in 1832, three years after Catholic emancipation. In 1841, the Jesuits purchased Belvedere House on neighbouring Great Denmark Street, which gave the school its name. George Augustus Rochfort (1738–1814), who became the second Earl of Belvedere in 1774, built Belvedere House, whose interior decoration was carried out by Michael Stapleton, a leading stucco craftsman of his time.