Baylor University Campus Tour

Baylor received its charter from the Congress of the Republic of Texas in 1845 and spent its first four decades in the village of Independence before merging with Waco University and settling here in 1886. The campus grew outward from a red-brick quadrangle of spired Victorian buildings, and later generations added a gold-topped administration tower, a library built to hold a single poet's legacy, and a home for the university's live bear mascots. This walk starts at Pat Neff Hall and Founders Mall, circles the historic Burleson Quadrangle, and ends near the Brazos side of campus at the Mayborn Museum.

Baylor is older than the State of Texas itself, chartered by the Congress of the Republic in 1845, and this walk lets you read its long story in brick, bronze and stained glass, from the administrative heart of campus to the red-brick Victorian quadrangle that took shape after the university moved to Waco in 1886.

Along the way you'll meet the people and moments that shaped Baylor: Judge R. E. B. Baylor, the frontier jurist who helped secure the charter and pledged its first thousand dollars; the Waco residents who raised money for a grand auditorium when the university weighed an offer to move to Dallas; and the Immortal Ten, whose story every freshman class still hears. Pat Neff Hall's gold-capped tower holds the 48-bell McLane Carillon, and the Armstrong Browning Library's stained-glass windows and bronze doors illustrate the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

The walk also touches beloved campus traditions, from the spring Ring Out ceremony on Burleson Quadrangle to the homecoming bonfire, and it passes the home of Baylor's live bears, a line of mascots that stretches back to 1917. It's an easy way to understand why Bears call this campus home, and why visitors keep coming back.