Texas Tech Judging Pavilion
Lubbock, Lubbock County, Texas
Marker Inscription
One of the first four buildings on the Texas Tech campus, the Livestock Judging Pavilion was the school's first structure built specifically for agricultural education. Completed in the 1920s, it was designed by the noted Fort Worth architect Wyatt C. Hedrick as part of the school's proposed agricultural focus. It has been used for a variety of college functions, including early basketball games. The pavilion now serves as a reminder of the influence agriculture had on the early development of Texas Tech University. 1982
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Livestock Judging Pavilion was among the first four buildings on the new Texas Tech campus and the very first raised specifically for agricultural education, reflecting the school's founding emphasis on farming and ranching in the 1920s. Designed by noted Fort Worth architect Wyatt C. Hedrick, the versatile hall even hosted early basketball games before settling into its role as a monument to agriculture's place in the university's origins.
Why it matters
The pavilion is a tangible link to the land-grant spirit that built Texas Tech, when a college on the South Plains was conceived first and foremost to serve the region's farms and herds.
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Related people
- · Wyatt C. Hedrick
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Texas Tech University Dairy Barn
Lubbock, TX
Completed in 1927 to house the cows of Texas Tech's Animal Husbandry Department, this dairy barn was deliberately designed as an Arts and Crafts bungalow to appeal to the farmers the young college served, setting it apart from the campus's Spanish Renaissance Revival architecture. Architect Wyatt Hedrick laid out a working dairy complete with milk house, milking rooms, calf stalls, and a cast-concrete silo. By 1930 the operation supplied milk, butter, and ice cream to the cafeteria, and students could offset their tuition by selling the products of cows they kept there.
Arnett House
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First raised in 1915 as a wedding gift, this Craftsman bungalow became the longtime home of pioneer rancher and banker Sam C. Arnett and his family, who helped build early Lubbock. After Arnett's death in 1956, his son donated the house to Lubbock Christian College, which moved it to campus to serve as its first administration building before it passed in 1975 to a women's support organization that maintains it still. Designed by Fort Worth architect M. L. Waller, it is one of the few early-20th-century residences left in Lubbock.
Bradford Knapp
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County Line Community
Shallowater, TX
Beginning in 1901, farming families like the Murrays, Pettits, and Hardys settled this stretch of the South Plains, hauling lumber from the nearest railhead to build a school that doubled as church and community center. Named for its perch on the Lubbock–Hale county line, the settlement gained cotton gins, stores, and social clubs, and after the 1945 discovery of a nearby oil field, petroleum joined farming in its economy. The school consolidated with Abernathy in 1940, and though the community carried on for another fifty years, only the church and cemetery remain today.