This is the second article comparing the two Queen Anne buildings constructed expressly to house single women: the 1924 Frances Skinner Edris Nursing Home, at First Avenue North and Boston Street, and the exquisite 1930 Saint Anne’s Convent at First Avenue West and West Comstock Street.
Last month, we traced the historical relationship between nursing and the lives of women dedicated to the Catholic Church. We’ll conclude the series by examining the architecture of St. Anne’s Convent and how the designs and current uses of both buildings reflect changes in attitudes about the role of women in society.
The nuns’ life
The nursing home, part of the Children’s Orthopedic Hospital complex of buildings, housed nurses serving doctors and children in the hospital. The long, narrow living quarters were adapted to office uses when the hospital moved to Laurelhurst in 1953.
Like the nursing home, St. Anne’s Convent also has a long façade to the street and is nearly identical in plan, but it tells a different story.
When St. Anne’s Parish School opened in 1923, the parish rented a nearby home for the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary who taught there. By the end of the 1920s and with the school’s success, more and better housing was needed.
On June 26, 1930, Father Thomas Quain, the parish priest, received permission to start construction of a home for 12 nuns. Ground was broken on Sept. 8 that year; and Quain celebrated the first Mass in the convent chapel that Dec. 24.
Long lines hold this beautifully detailed, clinker-brick, Tudor Revival structure to the ground. Viewed from the corner of Comstock and First, it strikes an elegant, well-landscaped pose above the street. Five gables — two on each end, and one above the entry — give the long, narrow structure an energetic grace. Above the entry and its cast-concrete surround are an oriel window with brackets and three leaded diamond-pane sash.
Two rooms flank the entryway where the nuns greeted guests. The nuns’ dining room, also on the east side, is marked by a wide bay with a copper roof and six diamond-paned, leaded-glass windows.
The nuns gave music lessons after school in the rooms on the west side of the first floor. Income from the lessons offset some of the convent costs.
Pointed arches and other gothic and medieval echoes appear throughout the building. On the south façade, five small windows of stained Norwegian glass are capped by pointed-arch, cast-concrete lintels — a fine detail, they light a small chapel.
With only four pews, this chapel is one of the more beautiful spaces on Queen Anne. The altar is slipped into a small, five-sided pavilion on the building’s west elevation. Alongside the pavilion, priests could slip into the convent through a special door that lead to a tiny vestry off the chapel, where they prepared for Mass without entering the nuns’ cloister.
Above the chapel windows, a flat, corbelled bay window brings bright light into the community room.
Upstairs, regularly spaced windows reflect the simple cells or rooms where the nuns slept. Not unlike the sleeping rooms at the nursing home, a bed, small dresser, sink and small closet equipped each tiny cell. The 12 women living in the convent shared one bathroom. The nuns lived a cloistered life, with most of the downstairs and all of the upstairs spaces off-limits to everyone but them.
Changing times, needs
The convent is the work of A. H. Albertson (1872-1964), one of the city’s most prominent 20th-century architects. Among Albertson’s best-known works are the Northern Life Tower (1927-29), the downtown YMCA (1929-31), St. Joseph’s Church and the former Cornish School (1920-21).
His work on Queen Anne includes the 1926 Stuart/Balcom House at 619 W. Comstock St. and the 1928 additions to the former Children’s Orthopedic Hospital.
After the last sister teaching at Saint Anne’s Parish School retired in 2011, the convent sat empty. Now, the parish has rededicated the building as its Spirituality Center, an experiment in adaptive reuse to be tested over the next couple of years.
Both the convent and the home for nurses stand as obsolete witnesses of discrimination against women. Like the nuns, the young women at Frances Skinner Edris Nursing Home lived sequestered lives in small rooms, with few recreational opportunities. Protected, so to speak, from the temptations of life in the city, they were on-call at all hours to meet patient needs and the demands of their male doctor bosses. They lived in stark contrast to the doctors and their families who occupied fine homes built in the 1920s, especially along Boston Street and Fifth Avenue North.
As for the convent, it stands out for many neighbors as a favorite building on the hill. Its beauty belies the poverty and relatively harsh conditions endured by the women who lived there. The discrimination against women is all the more apparent when compared to the large, comfortable rooms across Lee Street in the rectory. Living equally cloistered lives, the priests enjoyed private baths, large communal spaces and elaborate dining areas. Unlike the convent, the rectory connected directly to the church, so that the priests never had to experience cold or damp weather.
The nursing home has become an office building, and the convent now sits little used. Both conditions reflect the how attitudes about working women have shifted over the course of the last 100 years.
MICHAEL HERSCHENSOHN is president of the Queen Anne History Society (qahistory.org). To comment on this column, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.
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