The University of Houston opened in 1927 as a junior college holding night classes in a high school, became a four-year university in 1934, and moved onto this southeast Houston campus in 1939 thanks largely to oilman Hugh Roy Cullen. This walk begins in the original core around Cullen Family Plaza, where students rub the bronze cougars' paws for luck. It then heads through the library and the arts district before swinging east to the stadium and the station that put America's first educational TV broadcast on the air.
About this site
University of Houston is a public college or university in Houston, Harris County. It is one of 22 degree-granting colleges and universities TexasRoam maps in Harris County.
The site sits at 29.7204, -95.3436 near Houston. The nearest cataloged historic site is Texas Southern University (college & university), about 0.3 miles away. Others within a short drive include KUHT-TV, Channel 8, Barbara Charline Jordan, and Kuhlmann Family Cemetery.
The University of Houston traces its start to March 7, 1927, when the Houston school board chartered Houston Junior College, an evening program for aspiring teachers that met at San Jacinto High School under president Edison E. Oberholtzer. State legislation in 1933 cleared the way for a four-year school, and in 1934 the college reorganized as the University of Houston, holding classes in borrowed church buildings until it had land of its own. Heirs of J. J. Settegast and Ben Taub donated a tract southeast of downtown, and oilman Hugh Roy Cullen paid for the first permanent building, the Roy Gustav Cullen Memorial Building, which opened in 1939 and is often cited as the first air-conditioned college building in the country. The school left school-district control in 1945 to become a private university, and by 1950 the M.D. Anderson Library and the Ezekiel W. Cullen Building had risen around what is now the Cullen Family Plaza. In 1953 the university put KUHT on the air, recognized as the country's first educational television station. Financial strain led supporters to push for public status, and after a fight in the Legislature the university joined the state system in 1963, desegregating during the same era. It later became the flagship of the University of Houston System, founded in 1977. Today UH is a Tier One (R1) research university known for its energy, engineering, architecture, law and hotel programs, and its Cougars compete in the Big 12 Conference.
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