Gordon Technical High School opened in 1952 as an all-male school at the corner of Division Street and Greenview Avenue on Chicago's Northwest Side with an initial enrollment of 325 students. The school was originally named in honor of the Very Reverend Francis Gordon, an influential and high-ranking member of the Congregation of the Resurrection. Its first principal was the Rev. John Dzielski C.R. The school was built in the wake of the relocation of another high school run by the Congregation of the Resurrection, Archbishop Weber High School, which closed in 1999. The school was founded at the request of Cardinal Samuel Stritch, who envisioned a new type of Catholic high school, one that had both a college preparatory curriculum and a technical curriculum. The school moved to its second campus in 1961. By the early 1980s, the school reached a peak enrollment of 2,300 students. Its first website was launched in January 1998, at www.gordontech.org. The school formally shortened its name to Gordon Tech in 1999. In 2001, the new school motto was adopted, replacing the old motto "Ad Viros Faciendos" (For the Making of Men). The school was all-male until declining enrollments and regional gentrification during the 1990s (including the closure of all-female Madonna High School in June 2001) prompted the school to begin admitting girls in August 2002.