Initial parcel of 26 acres purchased by Archbishop John Williams in 1880 for $18,500 for the construction of an archdiocesan seminary. Abutting property was subsequently purchased and added to the site.

On the property offered for sale (28.3 acres) are the (Former) Residence of the Archbishop, constructed by Cardinal William O’Connell with a gift from the Keith Family and occupied by him and his successors since 1927. A gymnasium completed in 1938 for the seminary, also with a donation from the Keith Family. There is a garage constructed in the 1960s for the use of the faculty of the seminary as well as for the maintenance staff. The remaining small chapel of the Immaculate Conception atop the hill abutting the orchard is the tomb of Cardinal O’Connell.

On the property not offered for sale (two separate parcels: 28.0 and 4.2 acres) is the seminary and chancery complex. A series of buildings built at various times during the times of Archbishop Williams and Cardinals O’Connell and Richard Cushing.

The main seminary building: St. John Hall with its chapel completed in the late 1880s by Archbishop Williams. Cardinal Cushing joined a new building to it in the late 50s, named for a former rector, Bishop John Peterson. On Foster Street is St. Clement Hall built by Cardinal O’Connell in 1940 and added to by Cardinal Cushing in the early 1950s. The newest of the seminary buildings is the library completed in the mid 1960s.

At the corner of the property on Lake and Commonwealth is the Tribunal Building completed by Cardinal O’Connell in 1929 and used initially as the diocesan building or chancery. At the main entrance are the Creagh Library, formerly a research library for canon lawyers, now housing archdiocesan offices. In the 1950s with the expansion of archdiocesan offices Cardinal Cushing erected the Chancery proper which houses most of the offices of the agencies of the archdiocese.