Cornish School of the Arts

Cornish College of the Arts

Type	Private, non-profit
Established	1914
Location	Seattle, Washington, United States 47°37′04″N 122°20′10″W / 47.617868°N 122.336171°W / 47.617868; -122.336171Coordinates: 47°37′04″N 122°20′10″W / 47.617868°N 122.336171°W / 47.617868; -122.336171
Website	www.cornish.edu

Cornish School
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location	710 E. Roy St., Seattle, Washington
Coordinates	47°37′32″N 122°19′19″W / 47.62556°N 122.32194°W / 47.62556; -122.32194
Area	less than one acre
Built	1921
Architect	Alberston, Abraham H.
Architectural style	Other, Spanish Colonial Revival
NRHP Reference #	77001337
Added to NRHP	August 29, 1977

Cornish College of the Arts is a fully accredited institution in the Denny Triangle, Capitol Hill and Seattle Center areas of Seattle, Washington, USA that offers the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance, Theater, Performance Production, Design, Fine Art, Interior Architecture, and Film+Media, as well as the Bachelor of Music degree. Today it is nationally recognized as a premier college for the visual and performing arts, and one of only three fully accredited private colleges in the entire nation dedicated to educating both performing and visual artists in an interrelated fashion.

Founded in 1914 as the Cornish School of Music, the name changed over the years as the institution added departments and refined and widened its mission. In 1920, the name was changed to The Cornish School by which it was known throughout Nellie Cornish’s directorship. In the 1950s, the name was lengthened to the Cornish School of Allied Arts. In 1977, as the school gained accreditation as an institution of higher learning, it was rechristened the Cornish Institute of Allied Arts, and finally in 1986, it was given the name it bears today: Cornish College of the Arts.

Cornish College of the Arts was founded in 1914 as the Cornish School of Music, by Nellie Cornish (1876–1956), a teacher of piano. 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) 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, 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. Conceived by Cornish as "an elementary school of the arts — all the arts — with music as its major subject," 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.