The St. Norbert College Historic District is located on the banks of the Fox River in the City of De Pere and it contains ten buildings that constitute the still intact historic core of the campus of St. Norbert College, a thriving Roman Catholic liberal arts college that was founded by members of the Norbertine Order of the Catholic Church in 1898.

Individually, the buildings in the district are excellent, highly intact examples of the High Victorian Gothic Revival, Richardsonian Romanesque Revival, Neo-Classical Revival, Tudor Revival Style, and Contemporary styles, they were built between 1890 and 1963, and the four earliest of these buildings are the finest examples of their particular styles in De Pere. The district’s earliest building is St. Joseph Church, which was built as a parish church in 1890. The district’s next four earliest buildings were all designed for the College by William E. Reynolds, an architect who practiced in Green Bay, while the newest three were designed by the firm of Berners, Schober and Kilp, another prominent Green Bay architectural firm. Collectively, the buildings in the district include all but one of the buildings that were associated with the history of the College prior to 1963. In addition, these buildings still comprise a readily identifiable entity today despite being surrounded on three sides by the greatly expanded present-day campus of the College.

For much of its history, St. Norbert College, was the only institution of higher learning in De Pere and in the entire northeastern part of Wisconsin. During the first 68 years of its history the College evolved from a campus consisting of a single all-purpose building built in 1903 and having a student body of 40 into a multi-building campus that housed a student body of 1700 in 1968, and which houses 2200 today. In the process, the College became one of the most important campuses of the Catholic Church in Wisconsin and it is also the most important educational institution in De Pere. In addition, the District also contains St. Joseph Priory, which, when it was built, was the first permanent home of the Norbertine Order in North America.