Texas Christian University called various Texas cities—including Waco—home for many years before settling permanently in Fort Worth. The university traces its origins to a small private school operated out of a brick church structure in Fort Worth, founded by Addison and Randolph Clark in 1869. Finding their students dazzled by the vice of a rapidly growing urban center, the brothers moved the college to the frontier town of Thorp Springs in 1873. It was there that the school received its first charter as AddRan Male and Female College in 1874. It was later chartered in 1889 as AddRan Christian College under the official control of the Christian (Disciples of Christ) Church.
Though the brothers left Fort Worth with the intention of leaving city life behind, trustees soon began to discuss the merits of moving the university back into an urban area. On September 4, 1895, James I. Moore presented a proposal from the Executive Committee of the Christian Church at Waco, offering the campus of former Waco Female College, fifteen acres of land north of downtown, and funds to construct a dormitory for male students in exchange for AddRan relocating to Waco by January 1, 1896.
On Christmas Day in 1895, a train carrying around one hundred members of AddRan Christian College rolled into Waco. Following a formal reception at First Baptist Church—attended by Waco politicians, university officials such as Baylor president Rufus C. Burleson, church representatives, and city clubs—AddRan students, faculty, and staff marched three miles to the former campus of Waco Female College near North Eighteenth Street.
A lone brick building standing atop a grassy hill greeted the university. Though unfinished, the structure offered an impressive start to what was intended to be a sprawling urban university. The spacious building included areas for dining, a library, the business college, science labs, a chapel, and parlors often used by literary societies and clubs. As promised, the Executive Committee of the Christian Church of Waco provided funding to finish the third floor which housed the male dormitory as well as faculty apartments. Although financial difficulties—largely brought on by debt the college acquired in Thorp Springs—challenged the university, several other buildings were added to the campus between 1900 and 1911, including a girls’ dormitory.
Classes began at Add-Ran in Waco on January 1, 1896, including mandatory coursework in ancient languages, English, mathematics, physical sciences, mental and moral sciences, and social history. A Bible department offered coursework for ministers in training. As the university expanded, the school added more classes and divisions, including music courses and a business department. In 1902, trustees voted to rename the college Texas Christian University (TCU), marking the school’s decided effort to transition from a small institution to one of the most influential universities in the South.
Student life consisted largely of participation in literary societies. In the late 1890s, a volunteer student band formed and many students became involved in the Young People’s Society of the Christian Endeavor, a national evangelical society. Students and faculty collaborated to publish a monthly newspaper, and in the 1897-1898 academic year the school mascot and colors were chosen and the first Horned Frog annual was published. As the college expanded in Waco, extracurricular activities such as athletics and military drill teams grew in popularity.
Tragedy struck in March of 1910 when a fire erupted in the main building. Though all students and faculty made it out of the building safely, the building was too far gone to be saved by the time Waco firefighters arrived. Neighboring homes opened their doors to displaced students, and churches throughout the city held voluntary collections to raise funds to aid the school. TCU completed the semester by holding classes on the lawn, in the girls’ home, and in the dining halls.
The fire proved to be an enormous financial obstacle for Texas Christian University. Only $29,000 of the $150,000 sustained in damages was insured. Seizing the opportunity, other Texas cities began to place bids to entice the school to move elsewhere. Although local businessmen offered funds to rebuild in Waco, TCU ultimately found Fort Worth’s promise of fifty acres of land, $200,000, and connection to municipal utilities and streetcar access too good to pass up. The school rebuilt in Fort Worth that same year.
Plans to open a new educational institution at the Waco site never materialized, and it was sold to a real estate developer in 1912. Today, a historical marker stands at the old location of the school, bearing witness to Texas Christian University’s years in Waco and its contribution to the city’s reputation as the “Athens on the Brazos.”
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]]>A forerunner of Baylor University, Waco University served as one of the earliest and most influential institutions of higher learning following the founding of Waco Village in 1849.
When Waco incorporated in 1856, Baptists already held a significant presence in the small town. Seeking to establish a preparatory school for the provision of education for young Baptist men, First Baptist congregants banded together with the Trinity River Baptist Association in 1856 to create Trinity River Male High School, later called Trinity River Classical School. The small school held its first classes in 1857 in temporary quarters at First Baptist Church on Fourth Street. Hoping to expand the reach of the school, trustees purchased a 7 ½-acre tract of land south of the city plat between Fifth and Sixth Streets in 1859. With assistance from the local community, the school constructed two large brick buildings.
The year 1860 brought a series of new changes to the school, beginning with the formation of Waco Baptist Association, a voluntary group of nine Baptist churches organized to provide support to the local Baptist community. Taking control of the school from Trinity River Baptist Association, the Waco group renamed the institution Waco Classical School.
In 1861 a bitter dispute at Baylor University, still located in Independence, concerning teaching methodology and a coeducational dance brought former and future Baylor president Rufus Burleson and four new faculty members to Waco Classical School. Following the resignation of school head John C. West, trustees offered Burleson the presidency. Burleson adjusted the scope of the school and in September of that same year, it reopened as all-male Waco University.
Tuition at the Waco school ranged from ten to twenty dollars throughout the university’s years of operation, although the children of poor ministers and young men in training to become preachers often received their education for free. Budgetary concerns, a constant concern for the short-lived university, were underscored by large numbers of young men enrolling in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.
Enrollment increased and coursework expanded at the university in the years following the Civil War, aided by the addition of a female department in 1866. Although one of the first coeducational universities in the nation, classes remained segregated by gender.
The growing Waco school soon began to compete with Baylor University for students and the two universities, supported by separate Baptist associations, coexisted for several years. However, the growth of Waco, bolstered by the recent arrival of the railway, signaled the gradual decline of Baylor in Independence. When the general and state associations which supported the two universities consolidated to form The Baptist General Convention of Texas, it was decided to consolidate Waco University and Baylor University in Waco, utilizing Baylor’s name.
Waco University held its last classes in the spring of 1886, although Baylor retained many of the university’s policies, course offerings, and faculty for many years after the consolidation. As the Baylor campus expanded, the former Waco University structure was transitioned into a dormitory, and later phased out completely.
Today, Waco University’s contribution to educational life in the city is lived out through the operations of Baylor University.
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]]>Meticulous and exacting, prolific Waco architect Milton W. Scott crafted a legacy throughout the city that has withstood the test of time. Today, his historic buildings stand as hallmark pieces of Waco’s rich history.
Born in New Orleans on August 23, 1872, Milton William Wallace Scott came from a long line of Scottish engineers, inventors, and builders. When his family moved to Waco following his father’s death in 1883, Scott found work as an apprentice carpenter at the age of eleven in order to support his widowed mother and three sisters. Although he never received a formal college education, Scott loved to read and study, and after his mother remarried, he began to work as a draftsman for his stepfather John P. Powers.
Scott left his stepfather’s business in 1906 when he began to collaborate with Glenn Allen on the design of First Baptist Church of Waco. At that same time, the pair also began to draw up plans for the construction of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Plant (now, the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute). In 1907, he began working with noted Waco architect Roy E. Lane to design various private homes as well as the Rotan Grocery Company and the Brazos Investment Company.
As his reputation throughout the city grew, Scott received additional jobs which would cement his reputation as a Waco icon. In 1910, he partnered with T. Brooks Pearson on the design of Waco High, an elaborate three-storied project costing $140,000 (over $3 million in 2015) at its completion in 1913. During that extensive project, Scott met and married Ivy Eugenia Thompson Haythornwhite. The couple later had two children. By 1916, the couple purchased a family home at 617 North Fourth Street (as indicated on the Waco History map), and Scott designed and built a cluster of cottages and apartments around the home to rent out. Following 1913, Scott left his partners and branched out into his own work, though he sometimes employed associates and draftsmen to help with the workload.
Scott’s meticulous nature produced impressive architectural structures, but also frustrated many contractors. After his death, his son noted that Scott thought it was as his duty, as the on-site representative of the building’s owners, to oversee each detail of the construction process. Although his exacting demands may have produced some irritation, the results were unquestionable, as evidenced by the durability and strength of his designs. For instance, Scott designed many of the surviving multistory buildings of the 1953 tornado which devastated much of downtown Waco.
Scott’s work consumed his life. He took only two vacations during the last fifteen years before his death and worked tirelessly to ensure the quality and craftsmanship of his buildings. He designed buildings for various groups throughout the city, including eighteen public school buildings, portions of the Waco Methodist Home, Temple Rodef Shalom, and various buildings on the campuses of Baylor University and Texas A&M.
Though he had become well known throughout Waco and Central Texas, Scott scrambled for jobs after the Depression hit. He had been working to design an apartment complex as a personal project, but he lost most of his savings in the economic downturn. He struggled to find architecture commissions, and financial hardships compounded upon pre-existing health problems. He passed away in 1933.
Though some of Scott’s iconic work was torn down or destroyed during urban renewal in the 1960s, many of the buildings he designed still stand today. Structures such as Waco High and the Roosevelt Hotel convey this city’s great history while serving as reminders of Scott’s incredible work and lasting legacy.
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