Saint Anselm's Abbey

St. Anselm's Abbey is a Benedictine Abbey located at 4501 South Dakota Avenue, N.E., in Washington, D.C.. It operates the boys' middle and high school St. Anselm's Abbey School, which was ranked by the Washington Post as the most challenging in Washington D.C. and as the most challenging private high school in the U.S.
In the early 1920s, a group of Americans under the direction of Fr. Thomas Verner Moore purchased a tract of land on Sargent Road, and in 1923, Saint Anselm's Priory was born. The house was formed under the sponsorship of Fort Augustus Abbey in Scotland, which provided monastic training and sponsorship for the new priory. It was named after St. Anselm of Canterbury, the eleventh-century archbishop and theologian best known for his ontological argument for the existence of God. Initially, the monks were housed in an old farmhouse; the first church/monastery was built on a hill above South Dakota Avenue at 14th Street in 1930. A major addition was made to the monastery building in 1960, designed by noted architect Philip Johnson, to accommodate the growing number of monks.

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