Kerry Hall, Cornish's oldest building
and the last part of Cornish remaining on Seattle's Capitol
Hill.
Cornish College of the Arts
is a fully accredited institution in the Denny
Triangle
and Capitol Hill
neighborhoods of Seattle, Washington
, USA
that offers the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in
Dance, Theater,
Performance Production, Design, and Fine Art, as well as the Bachelor of Music degree.
Cornish was founded in 1914, as the Cornish School, by pianist and
voice teacher
Nellie Cornish, who was
influenced by the pedagogical ideas of
Maria Montessori, as well as
Calvin Brainerd Cady's ideas on music
pedagogy, and who served as the school's director for its first 25
years. Within three years it had enrolled over 600 students, and
was the country's largest music school west of Chicago.
The Cornish School began its operations in rented space in the
Boothe Building on Broadway and Pine Street. Initially, the school
taught only children, but it soon expanded to functioning also as a
normal school (roughly what would now
be called a
teachers' college). While music was at the
heart of the curriculum, Cornish recruited opportunistically where
she saw talent, and the school soon offered classes as diverse as
eurhythmics,
French language,
painting, and
dance. The
school gathered a board of trustees from among Seattle's elite, who
funded her school through the hard economic times during and after
World War I, and raised money for a
purpose-built school building. Cornish is considered one of the top
art schools in the country.
Campus
Cornish's 1921 building, now known as Kerry Hall, is on the
National Register
of Historic Places (NRHP) as "Cornish School"; its Denny
Triangle building is also listed on the NRHP, as the "William
Volker Building". The Raisbeck Performance Hall is a Seattle City
Landmark under the name "Old Norway Hall".
Notable staff
Notable faculty
Notable alumni
Notes
- Nate Lippens, short item on Cornish as part of "People Who
Shaped Seattle", Seattle Metropolitan, May 2006, p. 59.
Brenden Fraser went to Cornish and graduated with honors.
- WASHINGTON - King County (page 2), National
Register of Historic Places. Accessed online 31 January 2008.
- WASHINGTON - King County (page 5), National
Register of Historic Places. Accessed online 31 January 2008.
- Landmarks Alphabetical Listing for O,
Individual Landmarks, City of Seattle. Accessed 28 December
2007.
References
- Mildred Andrews, Cornish School, HistoryLink Essay 596, December 26,
1998, updated on June 28, 2006.
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