Saint Joseph Academy, sometimes referred to as St. Joe or SJA, is a private school conducted by the Marist Brothers of the Schools. It is located in Brownsville, Texas, United States, and serves junior high and high school students of the lower Rio Grande Valley and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The school is located in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brownsville. History St. Joseph Academy was founded in 1865 by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate in the downtown area of Brownsville, Texas. The school closed and re-opened many times under the Oblates in its earliest years. In 1906, however, the Marist Brothers arrived from Mexico and re-opened St. Joseph Academy, and it has remained open ever since. Initially, SJA was an all-male elementary school; and in 1926 a three-story building was constructed, known as the "Old Saint Joseph", where the International Bank of Commerce now stands in downtown. In 1930, the first high school class graduated from St. Joseph, and by 1940, the Sisters of the Holy Ghost assumed the administration of the elementary school. The new campus, found on 101 St. Joseph Drive in Brownsville, Texas, relocated in 1959 from its historic downtown campus to its current campus on the wooded and picturesque banks of a resaca (a regional Spanish word for oxbow lake), serving boys from 7th to 12th grade. In addition, the original site became the parochial school for Sacred Heart Church (established 1912), under the direction of the religious order now known as the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate. The new campus contained many architectural innovations, including: separate low-profile classroom buildings centered around a large garden area of native flora, reminiscent of Mexican Alameda Central urban parks; unique offset vents and jalousie windows designed to maximize the cooling effect of southerly breezes; and the gymnasium with its award-winning design (highly unusual at the time) by which the entire weight of the structure is supported by four curved roof beams that meet at the center of the building. The school had been all-male until 1970, when Saint Joseph became co-educational and admitted its first female students into the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. In 1998, the school switched from now-defunct TCIL to TAPPS, and by 2004, the construction of the new administration and middle school buildings began. On October 27, 2005, the buildings' dedication took place in the middle school gymnasium. On 8 April