Baylor received its charter from the Congress of the Republic of Texas in 1845 and spent its first four decades in the village of Independence before merging with Waco University and settling here in 1886. The campus grew outward from a red-brick quadrangle of spired Victorian buildings, and later generations added a gold-topped administration tower, a library built to hold a single poet's legacy, and a home for the university's live bear mascots. This walk starts at Pat Neff Hall and Founders Mall, circles the historic Burleson Quadrangle, and ends near the Brazos side of campus at the Mayborn Museum.
About this site
Baylor University is a private college or university in Waco, McLennan County.
The site sits at 31.5471, -97.1207 near Waco. The nearest cataloged historic site is Baylor University (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include George W. Carroll Science Hall, Baylor, R.E.B., and Burleson Quadrangle.
Baylor grew out of an 1841 decision by Texas Baptists, urged by missionary William Milton Tryon and judge R. E. B. Baylor, to found a Baptist university in the Republic of Texas; fundraiser James Huckins is counted as a third founder, and the school took the judge's name. Republic President Anson Jones signed the act of the Texas Congress chartering it on February 1, 1845, and classes began in 1846 in the Washington County town of Independence, where Baylor added law lectures in 1849 and awarded its first degree in 1854. During William Carey Crane's presidency the female department became the separate Baylor Female College, which later moved to Belton and is now the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. With Independence fading after the Civil War because no railroad reached it, Baylor, a men's school since 1866, was rechartered in 1886 and consolidated with Waco University, completing its move to Waco by the end of 1887. The university took over a Dallas medical college in 1903; it moved to Houston in 1943 and became the independent Baylor College of Medicine in 1969. Baylor first admitted Black students in 1964. Old Main and Burleson Hall, the domed Pat Neff Hall and Founders Mall anchor a campus that now reaches the Brazos River and McLane Stadium. Today Baylor is a Carnegie R1 research university with about 20,000 students, affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and known for traditions like the freshman Baylor Line and remembrance of the Immortal Ten.
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