Texas Tech Judging Pavilion

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how Duane tells it back to you. Way out on the South Plains, where the wind comes at you sideways and the sky goes on longer than a sermon, Texas Tech University planted its roots. And when they started putting up buildings, they didn't start with grand lecture halls or marble columns.

They started with something that made sense to the people of that land. They started with livestock. The Livestock Judging Pavilion was one of the first four buildings on the entire Texas Tech campus.

Let that settle in for a second. Four buildings. That's it.

And this one, this pavilion built specifically for agricultural education, was the first structure the school ever raised with farming and ranching squarely in mind. They brought in Wyatt C. Hedrick, a noted Fort Worth architect, to design it.

And completed in the 1920s, it stood as a cornerstone of the school's proposed agricultural focus, a declaration in brick and timber about what this university intended to be. Now, a building with that kind of purpose tends to find more than one use over the years. Early basketball games were played inside those walls.

Think about that the next time you picture a gleaming sports arena. The Red Raiders were once throwing elbows and chasing down balls in the same space where cattle were judged and futures in agriculture were shaped. That's a Texas kind of versatility right there.

Today the pavilion stands as a reminder of the influence agriculture had on the early development of Texas Tech University. Not a relic, not a curiosity. A reminder.

Of where this place came from, and what the people who built it believed was worth building first.

What the marker says

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