St. Edward's University: Notre Dame's Southern Outpost

On the hill south of downtown Austin, where limestone outcroppings give way to cedar and the skyline of the city stretches out to the north, sits St. Edward's University, founded by the same man who founded Notre Dame.

Father Edward Sorin of the Congregation of Holy Cross came to the United States from France in eighteen forty-two and built the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, from almost nothing. Thirty years later, in eighteen seventy-two, he came to Austin and acquired nearly five hundred and twenty-one acres of farmland south of the city from two sources: a widow named Mary Doyle, who wanted a Catholic school on her land, and an adjacent parcel from Colonel Willis Robards. Sorin named the new school in honor of his patron saint, the medieval English king Edward the Confessor.

Two Holy Cross Brothers arrived in eighteen seventy-four to work the farm and prepare the grounds. The first class was taught in eighteen seventy-eight, in the old Doyle farmhouse. The school was formally chartered as a college in eighteen eighty-five and received its university charter in nineteen twenty-five.

What makes St. Edward's unusual in the Texas landscape is the directness of its connection to one of America's great Catholic universities. The Congregation of Holy Cross operates both institutions, creating a shared tradition of intellectual service and community engagement that has shaped the character of the Austin campus for nearly a hundred and fifty years.

Today St. Edward's sits on one of the most dramatic urban hilltops in Texas. Its Main Building, a Gothic Revival structure whose tower is visible from much of south Austin, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The view from campus north across the city, and the knowledge that this hill was a working farm when Austin was barely a village, makes it one of the more quietly historic spots along this entire corridor.