Dallas Baptist University Campus Tour

Dallas Baptist University started life in 1898 as Decatur Baptist College, 40-odd miles to the northwest, and moved to this hilltop above Mountain Creek Lake in 1965. Since then the campus has grown into a hilly, heavily landscaped showcase of Colonial American architecture, with buildings patterned on Independence Hall, Congress Hall, and Monticello. This walk begins at the school's historical marker, climbs to the tall white chapel and its prayer garden, and wanders among the replica halls before ending at the lakes.

Dallas Baptist University sits on a hilltop above Mountain Creek Lake in southwest Dallas, and few Texas campuses are this deliberately designed. Since the school moved here from Decatur in 1965, it has built an early-American streetscape of red brick, white trim and cupolas, so a stroll across campus feels like a detour into the founding era.

The school's roots go back to 1898, when Decatur Baptist College opened in Wise County with 105 students. Money troubles brought it to Dallas, where it became a four-year college in 1968 and took the university name in 1985.

The architecture is the main event. The John G. Mahler Student Center is modeled on Philadelphia's Independence Hall and displays full-size replicas of the Liberty Bell, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and other halls on the hill borrow from Congress Hall and Jefferson's Monticello. Towering over it all is the Patty and Bo Pilgrim Chapel, completed in 2009 and patterned on the colonial meetinghouse of the First Baptist Church in America in Providence. Its white steeple is visible from much of the grounds.

Between the buildings, a terraced prayer garden with a rock waterfall and ponds shaded by willows and cypress give you quiet places to pause. It's an easy, photogenic outing for history buffs, architecture fans and anyone looking for a green hour in Dallas.