Some of the happiest memories of my life happened in Kerry Hall. As a late teen in the late '90s applying to colleges as a piano performance major, it was a tour of the Spanish Colonial Revival building that sealed the Cornish deal for me. I could see myself studying among the terra-cotta arches and chiseled Greek muses on the facade. Or lunching in the colonnade on a spring day, perhaps accompanied by a live soundtrack from my fellow music students. What a beautiful place to learn things.

It all came true. The long nights in the studio rooms, the ethereal choir classes, the virtuoso performances in the PONCHO Concert Hall, the long, weird conversations with fellow music wonks in the stairwells and the colonnade. The wide hallways ringing with music. The sweeping territorial view of Lake Union and the Space Needle beyond it from the dance studios on the top floor. For probably a decade after I’d run out of tuition cash and dropped out, I would sneak into the practice rooms at Kerry.

Nellie Cornish, known as Miss Aunt Nellie to her private piano students, began teaching the instrument in 1902. But she was no mere piano teacher. She held an ideal, revolutionary at the time, that no art form could be isolated and that exposing students to all artistic disciplines was mandatory to their education. The Cornish School eventually took over the whole floor of its original home on Pike and Broadway, offering courses on folk dancing, French, eurythmics, ballet, and marionettes among other disciplines—then it outgrew the space.

In 1920, after much campaigning, fundraising, and community organizing, a location was secured for expanding the arts school onto a new dedicated campus—just under half an acre at Roy Street and Harvard Avenue. Ground was broken on Kerry Hall on New Year’s Day 1921. Architect Abraham Horace Albertson had previously designed St. Joseph's Church, the Northern Life Tower, and both Condon Hall and the infirmary at the University of Washington.

There's a popular notion that Kerry Hall was named for Cornish's mother, but I'm suspicious for two reasons: A. According to Find a Grave, Jennetta Cornish was known by the nickname Jennie, not Kerry, and more compellingly, B. the Cornish Realty Group, assembled several years earlier by wealthy Seattleites in response to low student enrollment during WWI, raised money specifically for Kerry Hall’s construction, and the board included lumber magnate Albert S. Kerry. (Queen Anne Hill’s Kerry Park is also named in his honor.) 

No matter who it’s named for, Kerry and his fellow elite Seattleites came through, and in 1921, Kerry Hall finally manifested at 710 Roy Street, nine blocks north of the Booth Building campus. Built in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, the 31,900-square-foot, three-story brick building was later clad in stucco on three sides and garnished with terra-cotta ornaments.

Kerry Hall came equipped with a 190-seat theater for student performances on the building’s east end. Once part of the now-defunct PONCHO nonprofit, the theater’s entrance sits within a colonnade, and Kerry is one of few Seattle buildings to feature one—you’d think we’d see more of them in such a rainy climate. In the courtyard, alongside the colonnade, cherry blossom trees and a big red camellia bloom variously and to a very Spanish effect, with floral views peeping through the arches. The exterior of the building appears almost identical today as it did when it was constructed, with the only differences being its color—it was originally painted peach, then pink, and now white—and the recent removal of the iconic pair of American elms next to the main entrance, which were lost to Dutch elm disease in 2023. 

When Kerry Hall was completed in July of 1921 and the Cornish School moved in—along with Miss Aunt Nellie herself, who lived in the third-floor penthouse with her adopted daughter Elena Miramova—the neighbors wasted no time in expressing their indignation. The same summer, a petition was circulated asking for the school to be closed on the grounds that the music pouring from the building was “a public nuisance to the neighborhood.” In December of that year, the case of Neighborhood v. Cornish School opened in superior court with Judge A. W. Frater presiding. A week later, Fraser, who had an interest in the arts, ruled in Cornish’s favor, telling the neighbors to move to the countryside if they couldn’t stand the sounds of the city.   

Enrollment boomed throughout the 1920s, although the Depression hit Cornish hard in 1929. In 1937, aged 61, Nellie Cornish resigned as director and moved to New York City to live near her daughter; their apartments became a dance studio. Cornish continued to expand, although Kerry Hall remained essentially unchanged over the years. Several houses on East Harvard Street were acquired to use for classrooms. The school became a fully accredited college in 1977, offering Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Music degrees as the Cornish Institute. In 1983, the college purchased the former Lakeside School six blocks north, next to St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral. The visual art and theater departments were jettisoned up to Cornish North, aka CoNo, while dance and music remained at Kerry Hall. 

In the early aughts, Cornish purchased several properties in South Lake Union, moving its HQ to Lenora Square, a freshly restored, seven-story Art Deco office building. It sold the Harvard Houses, which were razed, and the Cornish North campus soon after. Pretty little Kerry Hall, still housing the dance and music departments, was the sole remaining Cornish presence on the Hill. 

Last spring, I got an invite from a Facebook group called “Save Kerry Hall.” Longtime Cornish professor Kim MacKay, who taught me English comp and African literature and a whole class about Ulysses from the gorgeous Harvard Houses back in the '90s, was looking for help, as Cornish had announced its plans to sell the historic music and dance building. MacKay had teamed up with former Cornish registrar Mags Oldman to try to spread the word to possible benevolent buyers.

Although MacKay had since retired and moved to Europe, he taught at Cornish for several decades and began campaigning fiercely from the southern coast of Sweden to rescue his old workplace. MacKay still had a great network, and lots of present and former Cornish staff and alumni popped up in the group, voicing fears that the building would be gutted and turned into condos or worse, as only the facade is protected by its historic landmark status. Everyone was kind of freaking out. 

A student sit-in ensued in April 2024, and a petition was drawn up to preserve the building, arguing that the loss of Kerry Hall would displace students and local artists and risk the preservation of the building as a cultural landmark. Last November, with Kerry Hall’s fate still uncertain, a preemptive open house was held for the public, for Cornish alumni and others to reflect on their memories of the building and to say goodbye. 

It wasn’t necessary. The news dropped on November 25, a week and a half after the open house. Seattle Theatre Group, which owns the Paramount, the Moore, and the Neptune, had purchased Kerry Hall for $6 million. Its plans were to use it as a public cultural arts center, with arts education courses, rentable spaces, and public performances in the theater. 

“As someone who grew up in a community that lacked resources and arts opportunities, I am proud that STG will transform Kerry Hall into a vibrant place for people to feel at home and have potentially life-changing experiences rooted in the arts,” said Marisol Sánchez-Best, STG’s director of education and community engagement. A full calendar of events is expected to be scheduled at Kerry Hall by summer 2025.

Two weeks after the sale in early December, Cornish announced its plans to merge with nearby Seattle University, in order to expand science-focused SU’s fine arts programs. Members of the Save Kerry Hall FB group rejoiced, with one calling the sale of Kerry Hall to STG “the best possible news for our beloved building,” while expressing a little sadness about the structure of the college itself being dismantled through the merger. 

My old English prof, MacKay, was a bit more writerly in his response. 

“I am happy with STG's purchase of the historic Cornish School—Kerry Hall. What they've said and how they've proceeded so far bode really, really well.… I also have to say that this edition of the Cornish Board of Trustees seems to be the first in my experience to think 'outside the box' to address issues that have been simmering for*ever* in Cornish history.”

“At 100+ years?” MacKay wrote. “That is a good run, and Miss Aunt Nellie would, I think, understand and approve of these decisions.”