Monday, Cornish College of the Arts students gathered along E Roy on Capitol Hill for a sit-in at Kerry Hall. Their hope is to save the historic building — and keep the 103-year-old studio and performance hall as a center for arts and learning on Capitol Hill.

There is also a Save Kerry Hall group formed with hopes of asking Cornish to reconsider the decision — or help shape the old building’s future by finding a buyer dedicated to continuing its role in the city’s arts scene.

“Most of us feel that the Cornish school should not be sold and it could be part of a vision of Cornish in other ways on Capitol Hill, so [there’s] this sort of long standing threat and feeling of insecurity for many of us as far as the future of Kerry Hall,” Elizabeth Jane Darrow, a former Cornish faculty member who has been helping organize efforts to save the building, tells CHS.

CHS reported here as Kerry Hall hit the Capitol Hill real estate market in April. At the time of Cornish’s announcement that it was finally preparing to sever its final ties to its birth neighborhood and fully move its campus to South Lake Union, the arts school did not include a price for the E Roy property and three-story building just off Broadway within the Harvard-Belmont Landmark District. Its broker is now awaiting offers.

Cornish students staged the sit-in at Kerry Hall on Monday to raise awareness about the pending sale. The sit-in plan included improvisational dances by Cornish graduate Sylvia Schatz-Allison and an opportunity for students past and present to write goodbye letters to the building.

“The decision to divest from Kerry Hall is a strategic one, so that we can focus on our energies on teaching and learning,” James Falzone, academic dean and professor of music at Cornish told CHS about the planned sale.

“We began the move of our Music Department to the SLU campus during the pandemic and it is about 90% complete at this time. The Dance Department will move fully by Fall 2024.”

Dance and music classes are operating in “interim homes” throughout buildings on the main campus. Cornish is developing a master plan that will assess the college’s use of space in the coming years.

“Dance will inhabit several newly refurbished spaces in the main building, which will go through extensive renovations this summer to get them ready for the needs of dance students,” Falzone said.

The Kerry Hall deal is open to creative offers which Falzone said will allow for a variety of opportunities to develop.

The property listing highlights how the building has been used for classrooms, studios, rehearsal and performance spaces, and that the college has gained a significant amount of interest from potential buyers.

“Kerry Hall presents the rare opportunity for a user or an investor to acquire a historic asset extremely well located in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood,” the listing reads.

The Save Kerry Hall group hopes it can help shape a better outcome for the building.

“It’s a straight money deal for the current Cornish administration, and that concerns us,” Darrow said. “We want to preserve the historic building and make sure its next life is still in the arts and education.”

The group has support from neighborhood experts on the area’s architecture and history. In 2021 Cornish’s facilities board and board of trustees received a presentation on the importance of keeping Kerry Hall, and the Capitol Hill Historical Society wrote letters of support, Darrow said.

Darrow said the Save Kerry Hall supporters wants to work with Cornish to make it a win-win situation. She cited 4Culture as a possible ally, since they are interested in finding spaces for artists, as well as the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation. She added how the Save Kerry Hall group is hoping that the space isn’t turned into condos, which was a previous potential buyer’s goal a few years ago.

“I do not want to see Kerry Hall fall to the hands of developers who seek real estate serfdom,” a former Cornish student posted on the Save Kerry Hall group’s Facebook page. “This place was and is a sanctuary for those of us who never felt more home anywhere else. A place where faculty cared for, taught, and nurtured us into remarkable, better people.”

The property connects to the very first days of Cornish. Nellie Cornish called the site home at the time of the school’s 1914 founding meaning a sale of Kerry Hall will mark the end of a 110-year-old relationship between Cornish and the neighborhood.

The school was founded in 1914 at the corner of Broadway and Pine. That building was rejected for Seattle landmark status and is now part of a redevelopment that will create new housing and a new YouthCare Academy on the corner.

On E Roy, the 1921 building originally known as “Cornish Hall” before being renamed to honor the leader of a foundation created to save the school, has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1977, though that does not necessarily protect it from changes. It also sits within the Harvard-Belmont Landmark District, a city designation, which could offer it protection in the form of specific requirements surrounding any changes to the building and extra levels of review before almost anything can be done.

Stacy Lynn Gilbert, a 2011 Cornish graduate with such a love for Nellie that she got the historical figure’s classic small-framed glasses tattooed on her arm, is inspired by the school’s founder.

“I really feel like the spirit of Nellie and that building and Capitol Hill—all of the people that I met there—like that formed pretty much my life structure,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert works to keep Nellie’s memory alive through reviving her as a character and spreading awareness about the fate of the building. On behalf of Nellie’s ghost, Gilbert created an Instagram and Facebook, where she’s sharing content, as well as a Gmail account where folks can send in any stories or memories about Nellie and Cornish.

“They can email me if they would like to connect about Nellie Cornish. I may share these stories on her socials to help bring awareness to Kerry Hall and Cornish’s historical legacy in the Seattle community,” Gilbert said.

Nellie was a pianist, writer, teacher and a pioneering woman in creating an artistic institution at the founding of Cornish in 1914. Darrow is concerned that a developer who purchases the property could ignore that history and destroy the essence of the building.

“Historic preservation designations, particularly in a city like Seattle—they don’t ensure much and Seattle isn’t necessarily known for its preservation,” Darrow said. “There are not a lot of protections…there are ways of slowing things down.”

The Save Kerry Hall group is asking Cornish to give them time to find a developer that respects the arts, education, and history. Darrow said many are committed to this effort, and that the group is hoping to revert its name back to Cornish Hall The Cornish School to take back the name for Nellie.

Falzone says the college’s leadership would like to see Kerry Hall continue to hold space for artists and would gladly partner with a developer interested in that possibility, but also acknowledges the school explored similar options over the last several years, with none coming to fruition.

But the Save Kerry Hall effort won’t let change happen without speaking up. Perhaps there is an opportunity to respectfully mix needed housing with a future where there is still music and dance inside Kerry Hall.

“We want this to survive as some kind of use that it was built for, because it’s a rare space,” Darrow said. “We don’t want it to be condos or some store. We want it to be an educational, cultural, arts institution.”

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