OP-ED: Touring the theatres with Darrell Jamieson, Broadway Performance Hall

Broadway Performance Hall is the oldest and busiest building on campus. In fact, it was constructed way before our campus was. So there is undoubtedly a history there, a history most of us don’t know anything about, but fortunately, we have staff who have been with Seattle Central even before it became the college we know today, like Darrell Jamieson.

Darrell Jamieson is the head in charge of all theaters on campus: Broadway Performance Hall, Erickson Theater, and SIFF Cinema Egyptian Theater.

Jamieson started his journey into the theater world at a very young age by volunteering at local productions in his hometown. He got a bachelor’s degree in history from a university in Spokane, but soon after, he moved to Seattle and joined a touring theater company that happened to perform at the Broadway Performance Hall in 1979. Little did he know he would end up working there.

Hence, Mr. Jamieson was the most obvious choice to enlighten us about the history of Broadway Performance Hall. It all starts with the ancient tale of Broadway High School. I’m sorry to burst your bubble if you thought our Broadway Performance Hall had something to do with Broadway in New York. I promise it has a far more interesting story, not just about the building itself, but everything in it. Seattle High School was built in 1902. In 1908, it was renamed Broadway High School. The Auditorium Annex (today’s Broadway Performance Hall) was tucked behind the main structure.

It starts with Broadway High School getting demolished as their student population wasn’t enough, resulting in the Alumni Committee from Broadway High standing up against their entire school’s demolition, hindering it in any way possible. Soon after, the state made a deal saying they would save one building from demolition: the Auditorium (BPH), but the remodeling had to be done, which was then assigned to Mr. Jeff Watts. Changes were made to the building both internally and externally. The outside was made to look like Broadway High School, and the interior was improved by establishing walls, whereas before, it was just a small open stage with chairs. Now, the stage is covered larger, and the chairs are placed on stairs facing the main stage so that everyone in the audience has a good view. Each batch of the Broadway High School that graduated had a tradition of gifting their high school something of meaning, which are now historical artifacts in the Broadway Performance Hall’s archives.

Let’s start with the mural. Four classes pulled in funds to pay for this enormous mural titled “Masterbuilders of the Southwest.” The artist Eustace P. Ziegler painted this beautiful mural. The story behind it is that in the 1950s, there was a school called the Northwest School of Art, and many of its students were also students of the artist Guy Anderson, who was actually the model for this mural.

A gift from the classes of 1931-1934, the Ziegler mural is an allegory featuring the historical industries of the Seattle area, with the youth of today observing them. The mural was originally in the library of Broadway High School. From there, it was taken down and sent to San Francisco, where James Penutto conserved it at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It was placed in its current location in 1979. Ziegler’s other murals were in the Olympic Hotel and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer building.

The chandeliers were simply antiques picked out in 1979 because they looked cool. There’s not much of a story there, unlike everything else in BPH.

Then comes the two Edward S. Curtis photographs. Edward Curtis felt that Native American-Indian life was disappearing and hadn’t been documented well enough, so he decided to go up and down the whole West Coast and eventually create a series of 20 albums documenting this depleting lifestyle. Later, many of his glass negatives were destroyed, so today, these images at the BPH remain one of the few well-documented clips of the Native American lifestyle.

These two photographs were also a gift from alumni of Broadway High School. Mr. Curtis was here in Seattle, so the students decided to meet with him and ask him for these prints. The special part about them is that they were printed by Mr. Curtis himself, and copies of them are in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.  

One day, Jeff Watts gets a mysterious call from a former student of BHS who wants to get rid of benches in his house “before my wife gets a hold of them.” At the time, the college had a moving truck available, so Jeff drove down to collect the benches from the backyard, relocating them to BPH, but not knowing anything about their history. A few years later, a North West designer and craftsman happened to come into the building, giving Jamieson a chance to ask if they knew anything about the benches. As it turns out, they did. The benches were in a resort hotel on the Olympic Peninsula. They were carved by a white artist who learned his craft from Native artisans. When the resort closed, the benches were purchased by the alum and eventually found their way into Broadway Performance Hall.

Then comes the large clock—the grandmaster of all the clocks in the high school—made by Jos. Mayer and Bros. It stood in the Principal’s Office. Other clocks, made by Seattle’s only clockmaker, were in other schools in Seattle, as well as some of the street clocks in the city. This clock doesn’t work anymore, but it is certainly a way to tell if there has been an earthquake as the pendulum would start moving, and Jamieson and his team would exclaim, “Oh no! There was an earthquake.”

The painting “Convergent Winds” was made by Kenneth Callahan, a BHS alum. Before he was famous, Kenneth Callahan decorated BHS yearbooks while he took art classes in the school with Eustace P. Ziegler. Mr. Callahan did an exhibition in the early 1980’s to display his new style of painting. The school then bought the painting as a way to remember and commemorate a former student.

Now, the story of this vase is that for the longest time, Jamieson and his team only knew of this vase as “vaguely Asian.” The truth is, the vase is Japanese by origin and was originally part of a pair placed at the corners of the Broadway High School’s stage.

They found out about this when a few men came in to write about the grandmaster clock, which had apparently “gone off the radar” by then, and they had found out about a man in Arizona named Don Bugh, who was an alum of BHS and had pictures of the high school. So, while looking through that album, Jamieson found a picture of the two vases placed at the sides of the stage. But where the other vase has gone continues to be a mystery to this day. 

Next is a sculpture by Whidbey Island artist Jeff Day, “Moses”. The sculptor was a friend of one of the presidents here on campus, so he called the president and said, “I’d like to make a donation to the college.” Jamieson shares, “it came out of the clear blue sky,” and this sculpture was then decided to be placed at the BPH, as there was no permanent art gallery on campus at the time.

This last beautiful piece in the lobby was created by Frank Fuji, one of the local art instructors in Seattle. He created this painting specifically as a representation of all the art in the building. It serves as both a depiction of the arts and a practical mirror. 

“The alumni kept bringing things in, anything that reminded them of the school,” says Jamieson. Numerous alumni from the school to this day visit the Broadway Performance Hall with gifts or requests to see past yearbooks. This room was then organized and digitized with the help of the college library for the benefit of the alumni and their successors. Shockingly, this room is often overlooked, even though it is in the main hallway of the BPH.

“We love the tiger business,” says Jamieson. The mascot of the high school was a tiger, so Seattle Central decided to go with the same mascot, which sat extremely well with alumni. As a way to show their support for the college for keeping their beloved building, memories, and mascot, the alumni set up a scholarship fund for students of the college to help with their education. As the alumni started fading away, they folded up that money and donated a big chunk of it to the college foundation. One of the alumni was a board member of the foundation, which to this day has scholarship money for students in need and makes donations to Seattle Central solely because of the BHS alumni, “so their legacy goes on.” “Institutions are like people; they simply want to see important things go on,” concluded Jamieson.

The BPH is always locked, and no student or faculty member’s keycards can open that door. In fact, the only thing that opens this amazingly historic building is a literal key. The reason for this was that due to theft and vandalism, numerous mental asylums in Seattle had shut down during COVID-19. These patients then found a home in BPH, which led to problems for staff, an increase in robberies, as well as accounts of people, or, to be specific, “a man who was trying to climb this building.” Hence, this gorgeous building was forced to be protected by a key at all times.

Everything in Broadway Performance Hall has as much of a history as the building itself. We can’t let our history disappear, and who better than Darrell Jamieson to enlighten us?

I have heard these stories before, but every time I hear them, my interest just peaks. I tried my best to document this story exactly how Jamieson told it, but if you ever want to hear them from the source, feel free to get in touch with Darrell Jamieson to have your own little tour of the theater.