The University of Dallas opened in 1956 with 96 students on open land northwest of Dallas, revived by Bishop Thomas K. Gorman from an old Catholic college charter. Its campus is a modernist ensemble of earthy brick buildings designed largely by O'Neil Ford's firm and the husband-and-wife team of Duane and Jane Landry. This walk follows the central mall from the tower that marks the entrance to the graduate building at the far end, with stops at the library and church, and ends next door at the stone abbey of the monks who helped found the school.
About this site
University of Dallas is a private college or university in Irving, Dallas County. It is one of 18 degree-granting colleges and universities TexasRoam maps in Dallas County.
The site sits at 32.8454, -96.9193 near Irving. The nearest cataloged historic site is Smith (cemetery), about 1.2 miles away. Others within a short drive include Union Bower Community, California Crossing, and Oak Grove Memorial Park.
The University of Dallas name first belonged to Holy Trinity College, a school the Vincentian Fathers opened in Dallas in 1905 and renamed in 1910; it closed in the late 1920s and its charter passed to the Catholic Diocese of Dallas. In the mid-1950s the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur sought the charter to create a university that would absorb their Fort Worth junior college, Our Lady of Victory, and with fund-raisers Eugene Constantin Jr. and Edward R. Maher Sr. they persuaded Bishop Thomas K. Gorman to have the diocese sponsor it, with ownership vested in an independent board of trustees. The new university opened in September 1956 with 96 students on rolling land northwest of Dallas in what is now Irving, and Gorman hoped to model it on the Catholic University of Louvain, where he had studied. Its first faculty mixed lay professors with Cistercian monks, Sisters of St. Mary of Namur and Franciscans; Dominicans arrived in 1958, and the Cistercians went on to found Our Lady of Dallas Abbey and Cistercian Preparatory School next to the campus. Several of its earth-toned modernist buildings were designed by Texas architect O'Neil Ford, and its central mall is anchored by the 187-foot Braniff Memorial Tower. The Braniff Graduate School followed in 1966, the Institute of Philosophic Studies doctoral program in 1973, and in 1970 the university began sending sophomores for a semester at its campus in the hills southeast of Rome. In 1989 it became, according to the university, the youngest school ever granted a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. Today UD is known for a demanding core curriculum in the great books tradition, its Rome program and its Gupta College of Business.
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