Cornish College of the Arts was founded in 1914 as the Cornish School of Music, by
Nellie Cornish (1876–1956), a teacher of piano; at that time, she had been teaching music in Seattle for 14 years. In 1915, the school was known as The Cornish School of Music Language and Dancing. 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. 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. 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. 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. Van Volkenburg also began a
marionette department, the first such department in the country. By 1923,
opera and
modern dance had been added to the curriculum as well. In 1920, in recognition that music was no longer the school's central focus, the school's name was simplified to
The Cornish School. By this time, too, the school had expanded its age range, and was offering classes and lessons from early childhood to the undergraduate level. 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.), and Kola Levienne—may have been the first resident
chamber music group at an American school. In 1935, Cornish established the first (but ultimately short-lived) college-level school of radio broadcasting in the U.S. Through the 1920s, the school was often on the edge of financial failure, but was of a caliber that prompted
Anna Pavlova to call it "the kind of school other schools should follow." Although the mortgage was paid off and the building had been donated to the school in 1929, financial difficulties inevitably grew during the
Great Depression. 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. In December 2024, Cornish announced that it intended to merge with
Seattle University and become the latter's flagship arts program when an agreement is finalized by May 2025. Under the proposal, the two colleges would maintain their separate campuses in the city; Cornish would retain its of space for 500 students—a decline of 38 percent from peak enrollment in 2003. The merger became official on June 2, 2025. == Campus ==