To the Rescue 4100 block of yuma street nw
the brick building at 4101 yuma 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. After the sisters moved to Tenleytown in 1905, they aided the com- munity 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 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 at the southwest corner of American University’s Tenley campus 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 man- sion was adapted for elementary school classes. At the circle is St. Ann’s Church, a Tenleytown institution dating 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 1930s.
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