City: Austin, TX

Category: Education

Telephone: (512) 505-3028

Address: 900 Chicon St.

Description: Huston-Tillotson University brings much more to Austin than merely its distinctions as the city’s oldest institution of higher education and its only historically black college.In East Austin on 23 acres of rolling hills that overlook downtown, Huston-Tillotson is a center of cultural and community involvement for Austin’s East-side neighborhoods and one of Austin’s largest minority businesses. The university is known locally for its participation in a number of cooperative relationships with the Austin Independent School District, the City of Austin, Austin Community College, and local business and community organizations.This private 4-year undergraduate university, affiliated with the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, and the United Negro College Fund, offers bachelor’s degrees to about 900 students from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Within the college’s 6 divisions—business, natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, education, and science and technology—students can major in many areas of study, including the college’s notable programs of chemistry, teacher preparations, sociology, and biology. Huston-Tillotson University dates back to the 1870s, and one of its former buildings, Allen Hall, was, according to the college, the first building in Texas or anywhere west of the Mississippi constructed for the higher education of black students. Tillotson College was established by Congregationalists in 1875 (although it didn’t open to students until 1881), and Samuel Huston College was founded by Methodists a year later. The two colleges merged in October 1952 to become the present-day Huston-Tillotson University, which changed its name from Huston-Tillotson College in 2005. While the campus has modernized over the past century and a quarter, two of its historic buildings remain as splendid landmarks and fine examples of turn-of-the-20th-­century architecture. The Evans Industrial Building, built ca. 1912, was completely renovated in 1984 and designated as a Texas Historical Site. The Old Administration Building, completed in 1914, is one of the few remaining examples of the Modified Prairie Style popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright. This now-restored building was entered in the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.