University of Dallas Campus Tour

The University of Dallas opened in 1956 with 96 students on open land northwest of Dallas, revived by Bishop Thomas K. Gorman from an old Catholic college charter. Its campus is a modernist ensemble of earthy brick buildings designed largely by O'Neil Ford's firm and the husband-and-wife team of Duane and Jane Landry. This walk follows the central mall from the tower that marks the entrance to the graduate building at the far end, with stops at the library and church, and ends next door at the stone abbey of the monks who helped found the school.

The University of Dallas is a young school with an old soul. Bishop Thomas K. Gorman revived an old Catholic college charter to open it in 1956 with 96 students on open land northwest of Dallas, and over the following decades it gained a strikingly unified modernist campus in warm, tawny brick, much of it designed by O'Neil Ford's firm with the husband-and-wife architects Duane and Jane Landry.

The Braniff Memorial Tower is the campus landmark, a polygonal brick shaft about 187 feet tall with slot windows and a conical cap, visible for miles. A 1966 gift from the Blakley-Braniff Foundation paid for it along with the graduate school, whose Braniff Graduate Building is opened up by column-lined center bays so the central mall seems to pass right through it.

The Church of the Incarnation is a quieter masterpiece. The Landrys gave it a rounded plan that spared the surrounding trees and a stepped copper roof that channels daylight onto the altar, and in 2024 the Texas Society of Architects honored it with its 25-Year Award.

Next door, the Cistercian monks who left Hungary after the Communist takeover and taught at the university from its early years have their own abbey church, completed in 1992. Its walls of rough-faced limestone blocks, each around 2.5 tons, under a timber roof that seems to float above the stone, make it one of the most memorable sacred spaces in North Texas.