The following was written in 2012 by Darrell Jamieson, manager of the Broadway Performance Hall
The Broadway Performance Hall is the last remaining piece of Seattle’s first high school. The main portion of Broadway High School was erected in 1902 and the “Auditorium Annex” was built in 1911. Broadway High School closed its doors in 1946, but the buildings continued to serve as the home of Edison Technical Institute, and later as the first home of the first Community College in Seattle (Seattle Central Community College). The Annex structure contained an auditorium/study hall, boy's and girl's gymnasiums and a running track. (The auditorium was on the top floor of the Annex, and the gyms and running track are now Music Classroom 101!) The classroom part of Broadway High School was demolished in 1974 to make room for the modern campus of SCCC, but the Auditorium Annex was renovated into a performing arts center and dedicated in 1979 as Seattle Central Community College’s Broadway Performance Hall.
The history of the Broadway Performance Hall is reflected in the upper lobby’s permanent collection of Broadway High School memorabilia. The largest of these pieces is the mural on the north lobby wall. Entitled “Master Builders of the Northwest,” the mural was commissioned by the classes of 1931, 1932, 1933, and 1934 for $1600. Local artist Guy Anderson and one of Zeigler’s daughters modeled for the central figures. In 1973 the mural was removed from its original location in the High School, rolled up and sent to San Francisco, where it was cleaned by James Pennuto, conservator of the San Francisco Art Museum. It was placed in its current location in 1979.
The large oak clock was installed in the main office of the High School in 1912. It was built by Joseph Meyer Brothers of Seattle, who also did many of the street clocks in the city as well as the clock in Tacoma’s Union Station. The clock is lined with marble, and weighs over 700 pounds.
The Asian jardinière in the south window was given to Broadway High School prior to 1908. Originally part of a pair, the jardinières were in the library of the High School.
The modern painting in the lobby is by Kenneth Callahan, who attended Broadway High School in 1924. Part of the painting genre known as “The Northwest School” (which also included Morris Graves, Mark Tobey and the afore-mentioned Guy Anderson); Callahan donated “Convergent Winds” to Seattle Central Community College in 1981.
The two large photographs on the south wall of the lobby were donated by the class of 1916. These prints are by local Seattle photographer Edward S. Curtis. Curtis printed these himself from photos taken in Navaho country, northeastern Arizona. Personal favorites of Curtis, “Canyon de Chelly” and “The Vanishing Race” have endured as two of his most popular works. The original file or negative number is barely visible in the lower left-hand corner of the prints, just underneath Curtis’ 1904 copyright.
The Smithsonian conducted an interview with Kenneth Callahan in 1982 in which he mentions taking art classes at Broadway High School and illustrating for the Sealth yearbook. Callahan passed away in 1986.