Thus was born St. Anselm’s Priory. The small community’s leader was Fr. Thomas Verner Moore, OSB, a researcher and professor at nearby Catholic University of America with degrees in both medicine and psychology.
In 1930, the monks moved around the block to a new monastery atop a hill on South Dakota Avenue, and their community was thriving. Fr. Thomas knew from his work with adolescents that some of the most underserved students in the American secondary school system were the most gifted. So, in the long tradition of Benedictine education, the monks forged ahead to establish what was then known as the Priory School, a four-year high school dedicated to scholarship.
On September 15, 1942, eighteen ninth-grade students enrolled at the Priory School under Headmaster Fr. Austin McNamee, OSB. The school soon began to grow, and in 1955 the seventh and eighth grades were added, along with a new academic building for the expanding student body. Keeping with its English heritage, the school began using the form system: instead of grades 7 through 12, the classes became known as Forms I through VI.
When in 1961 the Holy See elevated the monastery from a priory to an abbey, the school’s name changed accordingly. The school continued to grow in both size and reputation over the succeeding decades, establishing itself as one of the Washington area’s most academically rigorous institutions. Following a major expansion to the academic building, Headmaster Fr. Michael Hall, OSB, added a sixth grade class in 1990, known as Form A.
St. Anselm’s Abbey School has continued to thrive in the twenty-first century. In 2003, the school completed a $9 million athletic and performing arts complex under the leadership of Fr. Peter Weigand, OSB, the eighth Headmaster and first President of St. Anselm's. This included the construction of a state-of-the-art athletic facility and gymnasium, as well as the conversion of the old 1945 gym into the Devine Performing Arts Center, containing classroom space, faculty offices and a theater with seating for 400. Academically, the school remains among the best in the region: recent graduating classes have had average SAT scores of 1360 (on a 1,400-point scale), and the curriculum remains one of the most challenging in the Washington area.
Today, the St. Anselm’s Abbey School community consists of 230 young scholars in Forms A through VI and their families, more than 60 Benedictine and lay faculty members and over 1,500 alumni. More than 75 years after the first freshman class enrolled at the Priory School, the school continues to pursue its mission “to create an atmosphere of peace, a sense of service to community, and a willingness within our students to work toward a balance in mind, body and spirit.”