By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Bishop Fallon High School was one of a handful of Catholic high schools opening in Buffalo during the immediate postwar years.
Formed in a merger between a diocesan program and Holy Angels Collegiate, the all-boys school opened with 272 students in 1950. The Main Street campus had been home to St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute for decades before St. Joe’s moved to Kenmore Avenue earlier that same year.
The 70 Buffalo Diocesan parochial schools had seen an increase of nearly 1,000 pupils the year Fallon opened, and that growth was expected to continue. There were 49,915 students in Catholic grammar and high schools in the diocese.
With a 1974 strike of unionized lay high school teachers as a backdrop, Bishop Edward Head cited rising costs of supplies and teachers’ salaries as the reasons behind changes for the 1975-76 school year, which included a $100 increase in tuition to $750, and the closure of Bishop Fallon High School at the end of the 1974-75 school year.
The complex was sold in 1980, and the block has been home to a Delta Sonic car wash for more than 30 years. The original St. Joe’s/Bishop Fallon building still stands behind the gas pumps at Delta Sonic, and since 2005, has been the home of the car wash’s training facilities.
