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A historic building that opened 102 years ago as a girls' Catholic high school will be the future residence for men studying to be Dominican priests.

The three-story building, near the Water Tower Inn, is undergoing an $8.1 million renovation and is expected to open late this year at St. Dominic Priory. It will be home to more than 40 Dominican brothers and priests from 25 central and southern states covered by Dominican provinces based in Chicago and New Orleans. The religious order is putting the priory here because Dominican priesthood candidates complete their graduate degrees at Aquinas Institute of Theology, which moved to St. Louis from Dubuque, Iowa, in 1981.

Students currently rent rooms at Jesuit Hall, St. Louis University's Jesuit residential community at Grand and Lindell boulevards. Their stay there was to have been brief, said the Rev. David Wright, a director of the Dominican community and a member of the committee overseeing the priory project.

"We moved into Jesuit Hall temporarily in 1981 and we're still here," said Wright, who is among those who will make the move to St. Dominic Priory.

Some space will be set aside for offices, but most of the building will be converted into bedrooms for the growing number of students.

"We have a steady stream of men entering our religious order," Wright said. "I think they find our common life attractive — our common prayer daily and our study."

The brick building's exterior will be refurbished. Most of the interior will be new. Wright said that some interior walls were compromised for additional doorways.

"We're in the process of bricking up those walls," he said.

The building, at 3407 Lafayette Avenue, is visible to drivers as they exit westbound Interstate 44 at Grand. The designer was a respected St. Louis firm — Barnett, Hayes and Barnett — which also designed the governor's mansion in Jefferson City and the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica in the Central West End.

For Loretto Academy, the former Catholic school, the Barnett firm blended Tudor revival, characterized by the ornate brickwork and the copper domes on each of two towers, and Colonial revival, marked by four white columns for a portico. It was closely modeled on Osterley Park, a famous mansion just outside London.

When opened in 1909, the Loretto was a suburban school built to escape city pollution and respond to population growth. The academy closed in 1952 and consolidated with Nerinx Hall in Webster Groves.

In the years since, the structure has served as a day care center, a home for retired Loretto sisters and an apartment building run by an association of religious orders to serve poor women and children. Changes in federal rent subsidies made it impossible for the association to continue to provide housing. The building, on the National Register of Historic Places, became vacant in 2009.

A two-story addition housing a kitchen, dining room and recreation center is being built on the structure's northwest corner. The addition has a contemporary design, said Alan Nehring, whose Webster Groves firm, Nehring Design, is the project's architect.

"The original building is so ornate, to try to replicate it today is just cost prohibitive," he said.

Working with a building designed by the Barnett firm is exciting, said Nehring, adding that the structure has "an incredible" chapel that will be restored eventually.

Workers for the overall project's general contractor, Paric Corp., uncovered chalkboards that had been painted on the plaster walls of what were once classrooms, Nehring said. New drywall will cover the old writing surfaces.

Wright said the building has held up well.

"It's in really good shape, all things considered," he said.