When Mother Mary Louis's plans to build this academy for girls in Queens were set in motion, the Sisters of St. Joseph came upon an obstacle, that hilltop, the Fox/Adikes estate "Rose Crest", had already been purchased by the Passionist priests of the neighboring Immaculate Conception Monastery, with the intent to build a high school seminary for boys at that location. Archbishop Thomas Molloy intervened and convinced the Passionists to sell the estate to the Josephites, for exactly what they had paid for it themselves.