The story
In 1891, Adrian Sweere, S.J., took over a small parish school near downtown Seattle at Broadway and Madison. At first, the school was named after the surrounding Immaculate Conception parish and did not offer higher education. In 1898, the school was renamed after the city it was located in as Seattle College, which itself was named after Chief Seattle.
Seattle College granted its first bachelor's degrees 11 years later. Initially, the school served as both a high school and a college. From 1919 to 1931, the college moved to Interlaken Boulevard but in 1931 it returned to First Hill permanently. When the college moved back to First Hill, it split off the High School portion of the school, which remained on Interlaken, as Seattle Preparatory High School. They remained connected through the Matteo Ricci program, which ended in 2017, and the many Seattle Prep Students who go to Seattle University for undergrad.
In 1931, Seattle College created a night school for women, though admitting women was highly controversial at the time. The night school classes actually began at noon, and were spearheaded by James McGoldrick, who stood up to Seattle's bishop when he complained. In 1934 a Superior General in Rome investigated the night school, but the president of Seattle College was able to keep it open for the reason that its numbers were needed to maintain the college's accreditation. The college was one of the first coeducational Jesuit colleges in the U.S., and these institutions were only sanctioned two decades later.
The college's School of Nursing opened in 1935, and many women from the college joined the Army Base Hospital 50 unit in 1942 for World War II. The first Black students at Seattle University enrolled after World War II ended. Sam Smith was the first to enroll and Millie Bown Russell the second, although Russell graduated first in 1948.
In 1948, Seattle College renamed itself to its current name of Seattle University under president Albert A. Lemieux. In 1993, the Seattle University School of Law was established through the purchase of the Law School of the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, and the School of Law moved to the Seattle campus in 1999.
In 2009, Seattle University completed its largest capital campaign, raising almost $169 million. This led to investment in the scholarship fund, academic programs and professorships, a fitness complex, an arts center, and the $56 million Lemieux Library and McGoldrick Learning Commons, completed in fall 2010.
In 2024, Seattle real estate developer Richard Hedreen donated his $300 million art collection to the university in honor of his late wife, alumna Betty Hedreen, marking one of the largest single gifts to a university ever made.
In December 2024, the university announced that it would acquire Cornish College of the Arts. This transaction became official in 2025 with the establishment of Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University, which became SU's seventh college.
From Wikipedia’s article on Seattle University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5