Baylor College of Dentistry

🏛️The era

At the start of the twentieth century, Dallas was growing fast into one of the leading commercial cities of the Southwest. Railroads, cotton, banking and wholesale trade drew people and money, and civic leaders wanted the institutions that marked a real city: hospitals, colleges and professional schools.

Dentistry was changing at the same time. For much of the 1800s, many American dentists learned through apprenticeships or at small private schools that were often run for profit. Around the turn of the century, the profession pushed for more scientific training, licensing and connections to universities. A new dental college in Texas was a bet on both the growing city and the growing profession.

The early years were not easy. The financial panic of 1907 hit the whole country, and a young private school depended on tuition and on people's confidence. In those decades, professional schools across the country either found stronger footing or disappeared, and affiliation with a university increasingly decided which ones survived.

Then came World War II. The armed forces needed huge numbers of trained health professionals, and schools across the country sped up their programs to meet the demand. That pressure shaped this college's story in the 1940s, as did the decision of its sister medical school to move to Houston.

👥People & events

The story starts with two dentists from St. Louis, Dr. David E. Morrow and Dr. Thomas G. Bradford. In the early 1900s they went looking for a place in Texas to start a dental college. Dallas was not an obvious welcome mat: most local dentists opposed the idea of a dental school in town. Others, though, saw the booming commercial center as the right place. The school was chartered in February 1905 as State Dental College, and classes began on October 3 of that year.

The first decade tested it. The national economic downturn of 1907 came while the college was still finding its feet. The turning point came in 1915, when members of the Dallas County Dental Society, some of them from the same profession that had been skeptical at first, agreed to sit on an advisory board overseeing the school's operations and teaching. Organized local dentistry now had a stake in the school's success.

In 1918 the college affiliated with Baylor University and became Baylor University College of Dentistry. It shared resources with Baylor's medical college, also in Dallas, and with a stronger program in the basic sciences it earned national recognition and "Class A" accreditation. During World War II it sped up its program to turn out dentists to serve U.S. troops.

The war years also brought a blow. In 1943 the medical school moved to Houston and took many faculty members with it. The dental college chose to stay in Dallas and struggled for a time to keep its academic footing. It rebuilt by expanding its clinics, founding a school of dental hygiene and adding specialized graduate programs. It separated from Baylor University in 1971 as Baylor College of Dentistry, and in the 1990s it joined the Texas A&M University System as a charter member of the system's Health Science Center.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

This college follows the wider story of how American dentistry grew from a trade into a science-based profession. Its path matches the national trend closely: a private start, a struggle to survive, a move toward university affiliation and accreditation, and finally a place inside a large public university system with research and specialty training.

It also shows how the world wars changed American professional education. The push to graduate dentists faster for the troops was part of a nationwide mobilization of medicine and dentistry. The medical school's 1943 move to Houston shows how wartime decisions could reshape institutions for generations.

Finally, the college is part of the story of Texas cities becoming centers of health care and education. A school that began over the objections of local dentists grew into a long-lasting institution that has trained generations of practitioners, and many of them have cared for patients across Texas and beyond. Most people never think about where their dentist trained. Places like this answer that question.

🧭If you visit

The marker sits in Dallas near the college's long-time home, in a part of the city closely tied to medical care and health education. This is an active academic and clinical setting with students, patients and staff coming and going, so be considerate and stay out of the way of clinic traffic.

As you stand here, try to picture the school's journey: from a small private college that opened in 1905, through its Baylor years and the hard period after 1943, to its place in the Texas A&M system. Few markers cover so many name changes, and each one marks a turning point in the school's survival.

This stop fits easily into a day exploring Dallas history. The city has many markers about its growth from a trading town into a regional capital of commerce, and this one adds a chapter about science and the professions. It pairs well with sites about the city's early twentieth-century boom.

For families, it's a fun way to make history personal. Ask the kids who taught their dentist, and how dentists learned their craft a hundred years ago. A quick stop here can start a conversation about how the jobs we take for granted had to be invented, argued over and built.