Southwestern University: Texas's Oldest

Georgetown sits between Austin and Waco, and on its campus stands Southwestern University, the oldest university in Texas still operating under its original charter. The school was formed in eighteen seventy-three by merging four earlier Methodist colleges scattered across the state. The landmark at its entrance is the Cullen Building, finished in eighteen ninety-eight in Richardsonian Romanesque style, thick rusticated stone, cylindrical turrets, round arches.

Remarkably, it was designed not by a professional architect but by a physics professor named Robert Stewart Hyer, who also served as university president. The building became a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in nineteen sixty-two. Baylor and the University of Texas may draw more headlines, but Southwestern was teaching Texans before either of those campuses existed in their current form.