Texas Wesleyan University Campus Tour

Texas Wesleyan began in 1890 as Polytechnic College, a Methodist school planted on donated land east of Fort Worth, and the neighborhood that grew around it still carries the name Polytechnic Heights. The school spent two decades as Texas Woman's College before a 1935 merger made it coeducational again, and it became a university in 1989. Rather than leave its old neighborhood, Wesleyan has restored churches and early buildings around its limestone core. This compact walk covers the original administration hall, two former church sanctuaries, the library, and the pioneer cemetery a block east.

Texas Wesleyan's roots go back to 1890, when Polytechnic College, a Methodist school, opened on donated land east of Fort Worth; the neighborhood that grew up around it is still called Polytechnic Heights. After two decades as Texas Woman's College, the school became coeducational again through a 1935 merger and gained university status in 1989. This walk tells the story of a campus that chose to stay in its neighborhood rather than leave it.

The Oneal-Sells Administration Building, a Texas limestone hall from 1902, has served every incarnation of the school and still houses the president's office. Just as striking is how many campus buildings began as churches. Nicholas Martin Hall started as a 1909 auditorium for Polytechnic Methodist Church, designed by Sanguinet and Staats and completed with a $35,000 gift from Ann Waggoner, and it now hosts recitals and concerts. A 1947 Baptist sanctuary has been turned into a stage for student theatre.

The walk also reaches beyond campus to Polytechnic Cemetery, a Historic Texas Cemetery more than 150 years old where early settlers of the area are buried and which the university helps care for.

It's a short, easy walk that shows how a college and its neighborhood have shaped each other for more than a century.