Convent of Bon Secours
This building was constructed for the Sisters of Bon Secours, a Catholic nursing order.
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This building, reminiscent of an Italianate villa, was erected in Tenleytown as the Washington chapter house for the Sisters of Bon Secours, a nursing order founded in France in 1824. The order arrived in the United States in the 1880s, establishing itself in Baltimore. The first nuns came to Washington during the typhoid epidemic of 1905 and provided much needed nursing and home health care, particularly during the catastrophic outbreak of Spanish Flu after World War I.
The sisters first occupied the old rectory of the adjacent Saint Ann’s Church, and built this 2 ½-story buff brick convent between 1927 and 1928. The design, by Irish-born architect Maurice F. Moore, clearly articulates the building's residential and religious aspects, with a hip-roofed main dormitory block, side chapel, diminutive arcaded tower, and rear loggias suggesting a Renaissance cloister. The convent reflects the history of women’s occupations, as well as the importance of religious orders in the provision of outpatient health care. It is one of a group of prominent Catholic institutional buildings at Tenley Circle.
DC Inventory: January 29, 2004
National Register: November 19, 2004
