Houston Christian University Campus Tour

Houston Baptist College was chartered in 1960 on land in the then-new Sharpstown development and opened in September 1963 with 193 freshmen. It became a university in 1973 and took the name Houston Christian University in 2022. The surprise of this compact campus is the Morris Cultural Arts Center, which holds three free-standing museum collections on Bibles, frontier domestic life, and Southern history. This walk starts at the library, visits the landmark Hinton Center, spends time inside the Morris Center, and ends at the football stadium.

Houston Christian University began classes in 1963 as Houston Baptist College, on land in what was then the brand-new Sharpstown area of southwest Houston, and adopted its current name in 2022. Its compact campus hides something few visitors expect: a cluster of museums inside the Morris Cultural Arts Center, each worth the trip on its own.

The Dunham Bible Museum is the headliner. It grew out of a collection of rare American Bibles the university bought in 1997, and its treasures include a 1782 Aitken Bible, the first English-language Bible printed in America. The Museum of Southern History covers the colonial period through World War II with firearms, clothing, early photographs and a diorama of the 1863 Battle of Galveston. A third museum re-creates about a century of Texas domestic life, roughly 1830 to 1930, through furnished period rooms that range from a frontier dogtrot cabin to a Victorian Houston bedroom.

Also part of the arts center is Belin Chapel, the first chapel the university had on its own grounds, a round building with a concert pipe organ used for worship and recitals.

It's an easy, rewarding stop for history lovers, church groups, families and anyone who enjoys discovering a small museum district tucked inside a college campus.