Gates Hall

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Gates Hall, up in Hale County. Now, every good story needs a beginning, and this one starts with a town. Plainview, founded in 1887, sitting out there on the South Plains like it had something to prove.

And eventually, it did. A physician by the name of J.H. Wayland came settling here in 1891, and somewhere along the way, he looked at that flat west Texas ground and decided to give a piece of it away.

Not sell it. Give it. For a college.

That college would bear his name: Wayland Baptist College. Now, a college needs more than good intentions and donated land. It needs a place to do its business.

So between 1909 and 1910, they built one. The original administration building, right there on that site. And they built it during the term of the first president of Wayland Baptist College, a man by the name of Dr.

I.E. Gates. First president.

The building named for him. That is a legacy that tends to hold up. Gates Hall stood as the heart of that institution, the place where the whole operation was run, where the college announced itself to the world and said: we are here, we are real, and we are staying.

A doctor gave the land. A president gave the building his name. And a town founded in 1887 gave them both a place to plant something that would last.

That's the story the marker tells, and out here on the plains, that's plenty.

What the marker says

Original administration building of Wayland Baptist College. Site (in town founded in 1887) given by J.H. Wayland, a physician settling here 1891. Built 1909-1910, in term of first president, Dr. I.E. Gates, for whom it is named. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965