It was in 1938 that the Monastery of St. Sylvester was built on the property adjacent to St. Scholastica Parish. The first phase of the monastery was blessed on November 27, 1938 and became the community’s headquarters and the novitiate.

     Detroit, the arsenal of democracy, became a boom city with its main growth northwest. Soon the monks became increasingly aware that their land in northwest Detroit envisioned as the permanent home of the American community was no longer attractive or even defensible according to the way of thinking about such things prevalent in the triumphal fifties. The city was not only closing in on them, but was actually depriving them of whatever privacy twelve acres of land can afford to a religious community in a bustling metropolis nicknamed “The Motor City.”

     For years the monks were on the alert to find an ideal place for a new mother house for the Order. They were choosy, careful and determined as any house-hunting family. They believe they found it in the rolling land of northeast Oakland County celebrated for the beauty of its landscapes and the richness of its human and material resources.

     With the consent of the archbishop of Detroit they purchased the land and took possession of it on November 15, 1959 as their house of novitiate. The property came with a modern family home. The house, doubled in size with the addition of spaces suited for monastic living, served the community until it was doubled again in the late seventies.

     The rather fancy horse stable was first converted into living quarters for the young professed monks. Later this same structure became the first house of the new monastery activity: Youth Retreat House — Subiaco.

     The monks dedicated their new home to St. Benedict and named it St. Benedict of Oxford to distinguish it from the myriad of places in the world bearing the name of Benedict, ("of Oxford" because their mailing address is the city of Oxford some three miles west of their home).

     St. Benedict of Oxford is the Major Priory of the Sylvestrine Benedictines in America. It was officially designated as the Order headquarters in America in 1978.