Other name | CCA |
|---|---|
Former name | Cornish School of Allied Arts, Cornish School of Music, The Cornish School |
| Type | Private art college |
| Established | 1914 |
| Founder | Nellie Cornish |
| Endowment | $10.9M (2021) |
Total staff | 105 |
| Students | 443 |
| Location | , , United States 47°37′04″N122°20′10″W / 47.617868°N 122.336171°W |
| Website | www |
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Cornish College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art college in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1914.
Cornish College of the Arts was founded in 1914 as the Cornish School of Music, by Nellie Cornish (1876–1956), a teacher of piano; [1] at that time, she had been teaching music in Seattle for 14 years. [2] In 1915, the school was known as The Cornish School of Music Language and Dancing. [3] Cornish would go on to serve as the school's director for its first 25 years, until 1939. The Cornish School of Music began its operations in rented space in the Boothe (or Booth [4] ) Building on Broadway and Pine Street.
As Cornish developed the idea of her school, she initially turned to the Montessori-based pedagogical method of Evelyn Fletcher-Copp, [5] but turned at last to the progressive musical pedagogy of Calvin Brainerd Cady, who had worked as musical director with John Dewey as the latter set up his seminal progressive educational project, what is now the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. [6] Conceived by Cornish as "an elementary school of the arts—all the arts—with music as its major subject," [7] the school initially taught only children, but it soon expanded to functioning also as a normal school (a teachers' college) under Cady. Within three years it had enrolled over 600 students, expanded the age range of its students to college age, and was the country's largest music school west of Chicago. [8] [9]
Nellie Cornish recruited opportunistically where she saw talent, and the school soon offered classes as diverse as eurhythmics, French language, painting, dance (folk and ballet), and theater. [10] [11] In 1915, the first full academic year, eurhythmics was added and the first studio arts classes taught. Dance, with a ballet focus, became a department in 1916 headed by Chicago-trained Mary Ann Wells. That year, Cornish became one of the first West Coast schools of any type to offer a summer session. [12] After the closing of their influential Chicago Little Theatre, Maurice Browne and Ellen Van Volkenburg were brought in to found the Drama Department in 1918; the department, with its incorporation of scenic design, music, and dance in its productions, became central to Cornish's plans to ally the arts. [13] Van Volkenburg also began a marionette department, the first such department in the country. [14] By 1923, opera and modern dance had been added to the curriculum as well. [15]
In 1920, in recognition that music was no longer the school's central focus, the school's name was simplified to The Cornish School. [16] By this time, too, the school had expanded its age range, and was offering classes and lessons from early childhood to the undergraduate level. [17] The school gathered a board of trustees from among Seattle's elite, who funded the school through the hard economic times during and after World War I, and raised money for a purpose-built school building. [11] Finished in 1921, the Cornish School building, now known as Kerry Hall, opened for the 1921–22 academic year.
The Cornish Trio of the 1920s—Peter Meremblum,[ citation needed ] Berthe Poncy (later Berthe Poncy Jacobson [18] ), and Kola Levienne—may have been the first resident chamber music group at an American school. [19] In 1935, Cornish established the first (but ultimately short-lived) college-level school of radio broadcasting in the U.S. [20]
Through the 1920s, the school was often on the edge of financial failure, [21] but was of a caliber that prompted Anna Pavlova to call it "the kind of school other schools should follow." [22] Although the mortgage was paid off and the building had been donated to the school in 1929, [23] financial difficulties inevitably grew during the Great Depression. [24] Ultimately, convinced that finances would not allow the school to do more than "tread water", Nellie Cornish resigned her position as head of the school in 1939. [25]
Cornish College of the Arts operates a three-part campus in the Capitol Hill, Denny Triangle, and Seattle Center areas of Seattle, Washington.
Cornish's historic campus is composed of its original 1921 building on Capitol Hill and its grounds. The building, now known as Kerry Hall, contains the 200-seat PONCHO Concert Hall. Kerry Hall was designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style by leading Seattle architect Abraham H. Albertson and is on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) as the "Cornish School". [26]
Cornish opened its new Main Campus in 2003 in the Denny Triangle area of downtown Seattle. [27] The 1928, Art Deco-style Main Campus Center is listed on the NRHP as "William Volker Building". [28] Other buildings of note are the Raisbeck Performance Hall constructed in 1915, a Seattle City Landmark under the name "Old Norway Hall", [29] and the 1929 Notion Building. In 2015, the college opened the new 20-story Cornish Commons, which contains a residence hall, studios, and meeting rooms. [30]
Located on the Seattle Center grounds is the Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center, the college's premier performance venue. Built for the Century 21 Exposition of 1962, the Playhouse was leased to Cornish by the City of Seattle in 2013. [31] Along with the 440-seat main stage, the complex includes the 100+ seat Alhadeff Studio Theater and a scene shop.
Cornish School | |
  | |
| Location | 710 E. Roy St., Seattle, Washington |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 47°37′32″N122°19′19″W / 47.62556°N 122.32194°W |
| Area | less than one acre |
| Built | 1921 |
| Architect | Abraham H. Albertson |
| Architectural style | Spanish Colonial Revival |
| NRHP reference No. | 77001337 [32] |
| Added to NRHP | August 29, 1977 |
William Volker Building | |
| Location | 1000 Lenora St., Seattle, Washington |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 47°37′6″N122°20′30″W / 47.61833°N 122.34167°W |
| Area | less than one acre |
| Built | 1928 |
| Architect | Bittman, Henry & Adams, Harold |
| Architectural style | Art Deco |
| NRHP reference No. | 83004236 [32] |
| Added to NRHP | October 13, 1983 |
The library at Cornish College specializes in art, dance, design, music, performance production, and theatre. As of 2011 [update] it held 4,700 CDs, 40,000 books, has 2,200 videos, and subscribed to 154 periodicals. Its special collections include an image collection and 35 mm slides. [33]
Mark George Tobey was an American painter. His densely structured compositions, inspired by Asian calligraphy, resemble Abstract expressionism, although the motives for his compositions differ philosophically from most Abstract Expressionist painters. His work was widely recognized throughout the United States and Europe. Along with Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves, and William Cumming, Tobey was a founder of the Northwest School. Senior in age and experience, he had a strong influence on the others; friend and mentor, Tobey shared their interest in philosophy and Eastern religions. Similar to others of the Northwest School, Tobey was mostly self-taught after early studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1921, Tobey founded the art department at The Cornish School in Seattle, Washington.
Seattle is a significant center for the painting, sculpture, textile and studio glass, alternative, urban art, lowbrow and performing arts. The century-old Seattle Symphony Orchestra is among the world's most recorded orchestras. The Seattle Opera and Pacific Northwest Ballet, are comparably distinguished. On at least two occasions, Seattle's local popular music scene has burst into the national and even international consciousness, first with a major contribution to garage rock in the mid-1960s, and later as the home of grunge rock in the early 1990s. The city has about twenty live theater venues, and Pioneer Square is one of the country's most prominent art gallery districts.
Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, often referred to as BB&N, is an independent co-educational day school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, educating students from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade. The School has produced three of the 27 Presidential Scholars from Massachusetts since the inception of the program in 1964 and is a member of the G30 Schools group and the Round Square global education association.
Beatrice Whitney Straight was an American theatre, film and television actress and a member of the prominent Whitney family. She was an Academy Award and Tony Award winner as well as an Emmy Award nominee.
Nellie Centennial Cornish was a pianist, teacher, writer, and founder of the Cornish School in Seattle, Washington. She was influenced by the pedagogical ideas of Maria Montessori as well as Calvin Brainerd Cady's ideas about teaching broader values through music education. Martha Graham described her as "a small, round, plump little lady with the dynamism of a rocket." She founded the Cornish School in 1914 and served as the school's director for the next 25 years. Within three years it had enrolled over 600 students, and was the country's largest music school west of Chicago.
Adolph Rudolphovich Bolm was a Russian-born American ballet dancer and choreographer, of German descent.
As the new medium of cinema was beginning to replace theater as a source of large-scale spectacle, the Little Theatre Movement developed in the United States around 1912. The Little Theatre Movement served to provide experimental centers for the dramatic arts, free from the standard production mechanisms used in prominent commercial theaters. In several large cities, beginning with Chicago, Boston, Seattle, and Detroit, companies formed to produce more intimate, non-commercial, non-profit-centered, and reform-minded entertainments.
The ten-story Fine Arts Building, formerly known as the Studebaker Building, is located at 410 S Michigan Avenue across from Grant Park in Chicago in the Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District. It was built for the Studebaker company in 1884–1885 by Solon Spencer Beman, and extensively remodeled in 1898, when Beman removed the building's eighth (top) story and added three new stories. Studebaker constructed the building as a carriage sales and service operation with manufacturing on upper floors. The two granite columns at the main entrance, 3 feet 8 inches (1.12 m) in diameter and 12 feet 10 inches (3.91 m) high, were said to be the largest polished monolithic shafts in the country. The interior features Art Nouveau motifs and murals by artists such as Martha Susan Baker, Frederic Clay Bartlett, Oliver Dennett Grover, Frank Xavier Leyendecker, and Bertha Sophia Menzler-Peyton dating from the 1898 renovation. In the early 20th century, the Kalo Shop and Wilro Shop, firms owned by women and specializing in Arts and Crafts items, were established in the Fine Arts Building.
Elena Miramova was an American actress and playwright.
John Davidson Butler (1890–1976), was an American artist from Seattle, Washington. He worked primarily as a painter, but later also as a printmaker and ceramicist.
The Holyoke Building is a historic building located in downtown Seattle, Washington. It is a substantial five story brick structure with stone trimmings. Construction began at the corner of First Avenue and Spring Streets just before the Great Seattle fire of 1889. Completed in early 1890, it was among the first permanent buildings completed and ready for occupancy in downtown Seattle following the fire. Today the Holyoke Building is one of the very few such buildings still standing in Seattle outside of the Pioneer Square district and is a historic remnant of the northward expansion of Seattle's business district between the time of the great fire and the Yukon Gold Rush in 1897.
Nancy Skinner Nordhoff is an American philanthropist and environmentalist. Nordhoff's work is primarily focused in the Seattle and Langley, Washington regions, where she works to empower women, support rural communities and promote environmentalism of Washington's flora and fauna. In 2006, she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.
Maude Evelyn Ashton Fletcher Copp created a method for teaching children how to play the piano: the Fletcher Music Method.
A theater company formed in 1912, the Chicago Little Theatre spearheaded and lent its name to a historic, popular wave in American Theater, the Little Theatre Movement. Founded in its namesake city by Ellen Van Volkenburg and Maurice Browne, the company was an art theater formed in opposition to the commercial values which held sway at the time. The company performed work by contemporary writers and Greek classics, as well as pioneering puppetry and puppet plays. Poetic dramas, restrained acting and new concepts in scenography were hallmarks of the Chicago Little Theatre.
Maurice Browne was a man of the theatre in the United States and the United Kingdom. A poet, actor and theatre director, he has been credited, along with his then-wife Ellen Van Volkenburg, as the founder of the Little Theatre Movement in America through his work with the Chicago Little Theatre.
Calvin Brainerd Cady was an American musician, music teacher, leading educational philosopher and writer of the progressive era of education in his subject area.
Bonnie Bird was an American modern dancer and dance educator.
Stratus is a residential high-rise building in Seattle, Washington. The 43-story skyscraper, located in the Denny Triangle neighborhood, was completed in 2017, with 396 apartments and ground-floor retail space.
Ellen Van Volkenburg, born Nellie Van Volkenburg in Battle Creek, Michigan, was a leading actress, director, puppeteer and theater educator in the United States and the UK.
The Ladies Musical Club of Seattle (LMC), founded in 1891, is the oldest musical organization in Seattle, Washington. Although it began as a women's organization, it now also accepts men as full members. The LMC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
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