Cornish College of the Arts history

In 1915, the first full academic year, eurhythmics was added and the first studio arts classes taught.

When White Russian artists fled their homeland in 1917 during the Russian Revolution, Nellie Cornish went to New York to find drama, ballet, and music faculty among their ranks.

In 1920 a group of prominent, wealthy, and artistically minded women and their husbands came to the rescue and formed the Cornish Realty Company to gather financing to build a new home for the school.

Construction for the new campus of "The Cornish School for Drama, Music, Dance" began on the first day of 1921.

Nellie Cornish visits the construction site of what would become Kerry Hall, 1924.

The school's leaders very much wanted to combine many of its operations in a single place, and a perfect location soon became available -- the recently restored, seven-story, 1928 art deco Lenora Square Building, at Lenora Street and Denny Way in downtown Seattle's Denny Triangle neighborhood.

In 1929, Agnes Anderson, a member of the foundation's board of directors, paid off the mortgage balance, rescuing the school from financial doom.

In 1935, Cornish established the first (but ultimately short-lived) college-level school of radio broadcasting in the United States

Nellie Cornish handing out degrees at The Cornish School's 1937 graduation ceremony.

1939) and Katherine Kerry (d.

In 1954, with Cornish facing possible closure, ownership of the school was transferred to the Music and Art Foundation, a much larger group that had started life as an off-branch of the Cornish Foundation.

Music and Art Foundation assumes ownership of Cornish School and in 1955 is renamed Cornish School of the Allied Arts.

Nellie Cornish died in April 1956, almost 80 years of age.

Miss Aunt Nellie: The Autobiography of Nellie C. Cornish, was published by the University of Washington Press in 1964, largely with funds from the Cornish School Alumni Association.

In 1968 a Board of Trustees is established.

When he retired in December 1972, he could boast that, for perhaps the first time in its history, the school was operating in the black, if barely.

In 1981 it purchased the former Lakeside Middle School at 1501 10th Avenue E, near St Mark's Episcopal Cathedral some five blocks north of Kerry Hall.

Previously, in 1983, Cornish purchases Lakeside School (The St Nicholas School) and establishes the Cornish North campus.

In 1986, Cornish is renamed Cornish College of the Arts.

An intensive fundraising effort was undertaken, and by 1989 the college was able to pay off the mortgage on the Lakeside property, with an additional $800,000 on hand to improve facilities and finance new and existing programs.

In April 1994 Sergei P. Tschernisch, a founder of the California Institute for the Arts and the dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, became the new head of Cornish.

Tschernisch built on the school's relationships with the individuals and foundations that had helped sustain it over the years, and in 2000 it was announced that $7 million had been pledged for scholarships, improvements, and the purchase of additional space.

In 2002, it purchased two additional properties in the Denny Triangle, the nearby Sons of Norway and Orion buildings.

By 2003, Cornish College of the Arts relocated Art, Design, Humanities + Sciences, Performance Production, Theater, Library, and Student Services to its new campus in South Lake Union.

In the summer of 2009 Cornish announced that it would open its first-ever dormitories for students, housed in two former hotels near the main Denny Triangle campus.

Merce Cunningham's family and dance company members pose at sculpture honoring Cunningham with sculptor Steve Jensen (3rd from left), Cornish College president Nancy Uscher (in red) and board chair John Gordon Hill (far left), Seattle, October 25, 2011

In 2015, Cornish adds the Film BFA program, and the following year, the Interior Architecture program.

May 2017 marked the first Commencement to award all 8 degrees: Art, Dance, Design, Film, Interior Architecture, Music, Performance Production, and Theater.