Marshall Hall
Marshall, Harrison County, Texas
Marker Inscription
As part of a 1912 plan to build the College of Marshall (now east Texas Baptist University), Marshall Hall is the oldest building on campus. Marshall hall was constructed on a high point of the former Van Zandt Family Plantation. Trustees of the college and Dr. William T. Tardy, a pastor of the First Baptist Church and an ardent supporter of the college, purchased 100 acres of land on January 27, 1912, from the K.M. Van Zandt family for $25,000. The trustees received the college charter from the state of Texas after a 1912 community effort to create a southern Baptist college in east Texas. Thurman C. Gardner, a Baptist training union leader, began his presidency of the college in 1913. Trustees m. Turney, W.T. Twyman, and M.P. McGee served on the building committee, while architect George Burnett of Waco designed Marshall hall. Breaking ground on July 5, 1915, the Caddo Construction Company of Muskogee, Oklahoma, fulfilled the building contract. Completed in 1916, Marshall Hall included administrative offices, a gymnasium, laboratories, a library, classrooms, and a chapel-theater. Built with Jacobean-Tudor and neoclassical design elements, the four-story building was built to be “thoroughly modern and strictly fireproof.” The Marshall Lodge No. 22 of the ancient free and accepted masons laid the building’s cornerstone. The student body first occupied Marshall Hall in 1917 with the inaugural academic session of the college of Marshall. Marshall Hall underwent interior renovations in the 1950s, 1980s, and 1990s, and remains a chief campus landmark and symbol of educational excellence. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2013
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Marshall Hall is the oldest building on the campus of what is now East Texas Baptist University, born of a 1912 community drive to establish a Southern Baptist college in East Texas. Trustees bought 100 acres of the former Van Zandt plantation, and Waco architect George Burnett designed the four-story hall in a blend of Jacobean-Tudor and neoclassical styles, promising a structure "thoroughly modern and strictly fireproof." Completed in 1916 and occupied by students in 1917, it housed offices, laboratories, a library, gymnasium, and chapel-theater.
Why it matters
The building reflects the wave of denominational college-founding that spread higher education across the early 20th-century South.
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Related people
- · George Burnett
- · William T. Tardy
Themes & tags
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