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Top of the Town
Tenleytown Heritage Trail
13 To the Rescue
The brick building across the street opened in 1928 as the Convent of Bon Secours (literally, "good help"). The convent's sisters had arrived in Baltimore from France in 1881. In Baltimore they quietly nursed both wealthy and needy patients in their homes. Soon after the sisters moved to Tenleytown in 1905, they aided the community during the frequent typhoid and influenza epidemics. Neighbors remember the exquisite lace and other handwork the sisters created in their spare time.
As people turned to hospitals for nursing care, the sisters explored expanding their convent for on-site care, but lacked the necessary resources. So they sold their building to the Embassy of France. The French International School held classes here in the late 1960s, followed by the all-girls Oakcrest School. In 2010 the Yuma Study Center planned to occupy the old convent, a city Historic Landmark since 2004.
Hidden from view to your right is Dunblane, one of the last remaining estate houses in Tenleytown. The Greek Revival style country retreat was built in the early 1800s. When fox hunting grew fashionable later that century, the house hosted the elite Dumblane Hunt (the name has two spellings). Eventually the grounds were sold for Immaculata Seminary, and the old mansion was adapted for elementary school classes. Today American University's Tenley Campus enjoys the mansion and these historic grounds.
Ahead on your left is St. Ann's Church, a Tenleytown institution dating back to 1866. This building, dedicated in 1948 as the church's third on this site, is a fine example of the magnificent urban Roman Catholic parish churches built between 1900 and the Great Depression of the 1930s. |