Texas Woman's University began in 1901 as a state industrial college for young women, and Denton was chosen as its home in 1902 after a contest among competing towns. More than a century later it remains one of the largest universities in the country focused primarily on women. This walk starts at a Texas Centennial statue, passes the first classroom building, and follows the collections that tell women's history, from Texas first ladies' gowns to the national WASP archive. It finishes in the stone-walled gardens around a chapel students helped build by hand.
About this site
Texas Woman's University is a public college or university in Denton, Denton County. It is one of 2 degree-granting colleges and universities TexasRoam maps in Denton County.
The site sits at 33.2234, -97.1295 near Denton. The nearest cataloged historic site is Pioneer Woman (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include First Building of Texas Woman's University, Sue S. Bancroft Women's Leadership Hall, and Texas First Ladies Historic Costume Collection.
Texas Woman's University grew out of a decade of lobbying in the 1890s by the Grange, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and Texas women's clubs for a public college that would give young women a practical education. The Legislature finally authorized the school in 1901, and a state commission picked Denton as its home the following year. Classes opened with 186 students and 14 faculty under the name Girls Industrial College, and its first board of regents included three women, the first to sit on the governing board of any Texas university. Renamed the College of Industrial Arts in 1905 and Texas State College for Women in 1934, it broadened from home economics and vocational training into the liberal arts, fine arts and sciences, awarding master's degrees from 1930 and doctorates from 1953. The Little Chapel-in-the-Woods, designed by O'Neil Ford and dedicated by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1939, and the Pioneer Woman statue presented by the Legislature in 1938 became campus landmarks during a Depression-era building push. The school took its present name in 1957, admitted its first African American student in 1961, began admitting men to its health sciences graduate programs in 1972, and opened every program to men in 1994. Today TWU is especially known for nursing and the health sciences, which it teaches in Denton and on its Dallas and Houston campuses.
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