SMU: Collegiate Georgian on the Hilltop

SMU's founding president, Robert S. Hyer, laid out a campus plan meant to grow without tearing buildings down, and the early halls all share the same red brick, white trim and Georgian Revival details. The result is a hilltop where buildings from 1915 and 1950 are hard to tell apart. This loop visits the original Georgian Revival halls, most of them listed together on the National Register in 1980, and traces how each changed jobs over the decades. It runs about a mile and ends back where it starts, at Dallas Hall. Building interiors keep their own hours, but every stop can be appreciated from outside.

Stand on SMU's Hilltop and it's surprisingly hard to tell a 1915 building from one finished in 1950. That's no accident. Founding president Robert S. Hyer was a physicist who experimented with wireless telegraphy and early X-rays. He drew up a 1912 plan meant to let the campus grow without tearing anything down, and for decades architects kept faith with the same red brick, white trim and Georgian Revival details. Most of the early halls went onto the National Register together in 1980.

This loop of about a mile is about those original buildings and the second and third careers many of them have had. Dallas Hall was drawn with the University of Virginia's Rotunda in mind, and for roughly a decade it held every classroom, the library, the chapel and the offices. Other halls changed jobs over the years. A theology building became home to the law school, a women's building turned into a men's dorm and then classrooms, and even the heating plant got the full Georgian treatment.

Watch for small surprises too, like a painted relief of an elephant draped in foliage set into the facade of a 1926 residence hall, and listen for the carillon that rings the hours from a campus cupola.

Building interiors keep their own hours, but every stop can be enjoyed from outside. That makes this an easy, rewarding stroll through one of Dallas's most harmonious campuses.