For over 80 years, the Academy's tall, brick and limestone Collegiate Gothic main building on Wexford Terrace has been a distinctive part of the Queens skyline. Despite the increasing number of buildings, it is an architectural landmark that can be seen clearly from the Long Island Railroad. This is fitting because it was while traveling on the Long Island Railroad in early 1932 that, Mother Mary Louis, General Superior of the Sisters of St. Joseph, first gazed upon a beautiful hilltop in the countryside of Jamaica Estates and selected it as her ideal site for an academy. Although Mother Mary Louis died suddenly on May 22, 1932, her dream of establishing this academy for young women in the urban enclave of Jamaica Estates lived on among her congregation of sisters.