| A century of history 
Photo by Jeff Watts
A century ago in 1905, horse-drawn buggies (and perhaps an occasional horseless carriage) rattled up Nebraska Avenue between two campuses that were still largely grass and dreams. They had no connection yet, except that both were under construction. At Ward Circle, American University was taking shape, although it had no students yet. But there were already students in a newly built Catholic girl’s high school at Tenley Circle, in a building that, many years later, would be home to AU’s Washington Semester. The cornerstone laid in 1904 still exists, at the edge of a building that opened in 1905 as a Catholic girls’ school. The cardinal of Baltimore reportedly recruited a group of nuns from Indiana to run the school, a “select and high-priced school” for young Catholic women called Immaculata. A century later, the ornate turn-of-the-century building that once housed students and nuns is known as Capital Hall, part of a larger complex of dormitories and classrooms built over the years by Immaculata. Purchased by AU in 1987, the campus looks nothing like its earlier incarnation. But research conducted by Donna Chapman, assistant dean of Washington Semester, uncovered the hidden identities of many of Washington Semester’s dorm rooms and classrooms. The first floor of Capital Hall had acquired a swimming pool over the years. But now the space, minus the water and high school swimmers, is known simply as Capital Hall’s Classroom 111. The chapel where the nuns and students prayed had a second career as a dance studio. The principal’s office is now dorm room 221, while the nuns’ community room became dorm rooms 202 and 203, and the music room was transformed into dorm rooms 204 and 205. The classrooms on the third floor and the nuns’ bedrooms on the fourth floor were also remodeled into housing for Washington Semester students, who now can say they have the most historic housing on campus. —SA |
