Throughout the 19th century, numerous religious orders - many of French origin - established themselves in Barcelona, monopolising education and attempting to counteract the trends towards secular education, and for this reason they enjoyed the support of the more conservative classes. It was not uncommon for these congregations to have a school in the urban fabric of Barcelona and another, more elitist one, in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi. The orders of Jesus and Mary, initially established in Sant Andreu del Palomar, where Sagnier built a simple school in 1906, had an educational centre in the city centre, in Eixample, where the urban housing and the warehouses of the prosperous textile industrialists were concentrated (neither of these schools longer exist).
The Jesús-Maria school in Sant Gervasi, fortunately preserved without too many modifications (only a few windows on the first floor have lost their original ornamentation), corresponds to the usual typology of the school as a large isolated building in the middle of a garden. Although there is no shortage of examples of schools designed in the classical language, the most frequent is the neo-Gothic aspect, typically identified with religious architecture, and this building is one of the best examples: structured around a courtyard, it uses exposed brick with some ornamental stone applications. The original project called for the chapel to be visible from the outside, but it ended up being integrated into one of the four wings of the courtyard. In any case, it remains one of the most outstanding parts of the building. As he did in other churches, Sagnier used a common element in Catalan Gothic architecture: the roof of decorated beams supported by diaphragmatic arches running from side to side of the wide nave. Only the presbytery is covered with a pointed vault.
