Open air school

The schools were built to provide open-air therapy so that fresh air, good ventilation and exposure to the outside would improve the children's health.

The schools were mostly built in areas away from city centers, sometimes in rural locations, to provide a space free from pollution and overcrowding.

The schools were purpose-built educational institutions for children, that were designed to prevent and combat the widespread rise of tuberculosis that occurred in the period leading up to the Second World War.

[3][7] Built by Walter Spickendorff (born 1864) and founded by the paediatrist Prof. Dr. Bernhard Bendix and Berlin's schools inspector Hermann Neufert it offered "open-air therapy" to urban youths with pre-tuberculosis as part of an experiment conducted by the International Congresses of Hygiene.

[1] The movement quickly caught on throughout Europe and North America; construction of the buildings began in the first decade of the 20th century and carried on until the 1970s.

In 1914 the sisters organized an open air school in the garden of Evelyn House, Deptford where the children lived and slept under canvas.