DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna make sure you get every word's worth. Now pull up a chair, because this story starts the way all good Texas stories do — with land, ambition, and somebody writing a very large check. The year is 1912, and the city of Marshall, Texas has a dream.
A Baptist college. A real one, built from scratch, planted right here in east Texas. And dreams like that don't float in the air — they need ground to stand on.
So on January 27, 1912, the trustees of what would become the College of Marshall, alongside a pastor named Dr. William T. Tardy of the First Baptist Church — a man described, and I love this, as an ardent supporter — they went out and purchased one hundred acres of land from the K.M.
Van Zandt family. One hundred acres. Twenty-five thousand dollars.
That land had history before the college ever laid a brick on it — it was the former Van Zandt Family Plantation, sitting up on a high point like it had been waiting all along to be something more. That same year, after a community effort that apparently moved the state of Texas to action, the trustees received the college charter. A southern Baptist college in east Texas was now a legal fact.
Then in 1913, a man named Thurman C. Gardner — a Baptist training union leader — stepped in as the college's first president and got to work making that charter mean something. But here's where the story takes its time, the way good things tend to.
The building doesn't happen overnight. The trustees put together a building committee — M. Turney, W.T.
Twyman, and M.P. McGee — and they brought in an architect named George Burnett, out of Waco, to design what would become Marshall Hall. Burnett drew up something ambitious.
Jacobean-Tudor and neoclassical design elements. Four stories tall. And built — and these are the words they used — to be thoroughly modern and strictly fireproof.
In 1915, those were words that carried weight. On July 5, 1915, they broke ground. The Caddo Construction Company, all the way from Muskogee, Oklahoma, won the building contract and got to pouring.
And when it was done — completed in 1916 — Marshall Hall was something to behold. Administrative offices, a gymnasium, laboratories, a library, classrooms, and a chapel-theater, all under one roof. The Marshall Lodge No. 22 of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons laid the cornerstone, as if to say: this one's built to last.
And then, in 1917, the students arrived. The inaugural academic session of the College of Marshall. Young people walking into that four-story building for the very first time, not knowing yet that they were stepping into the oldest building on what would one day be the campus of East Texas Baptist University.
Marshall Hall got some interior renovations along the way — the 1950s, the 1980s, the 1990s — but it never stopped being what it was meant to be. A landmark. A symbol.
The Texas Historical Commission made it official in 2013. They built it on a high point of old plantation land, they built it to be fireproof, they built it to last — and a century later, it's still standing there, saying the same thing it always said: we meant it.
What the marker says
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