Mother Evelyn Murphy turned the first bit of soil with the spade still bearing the ribbons used in 1920 for the first groundbreaking at Rosary and in 1926 for Trinity High School. The building was completed in two years and dedicated on Sunday, November 2, 1952. The Fine Arts Building housed Rosary's first language lab as well as facilities for the music and drama departments, including a 1,182 seat auditorium and a 211-seat recital hall. As stated in a 1952 Chicago Tribune article to commemorate its opening, the building was “state-of-the-art” and included curved walls and an arched auditorium ceiling to reduce echoes, sound-absorbent pads in the recital hall to push sound into the audience, and green “blackboards” and yellow chalk in classrooms to “reduce the long-standing gripe from students about blackboard glare.” While some of those “state-of-the-art” features have since been replaced to make way for 21st-century technology (electronic "smart" boards, no more blackboards), many of the building's features remain to help preserve its history.