Dallas Hall

For sixty-two years Dallas Hall has been the focal point of Southern Methodist University. From its hilltop position on the 150-acre campus, the building has functioned as the center of intellectual activity for four generations of students while providing the unifying feature of SMU for the Dallas Community. Because of its physical, historical, and symbolic significance, Dallas Hall merits consideration as a landmark worthy of preservation.

In 1911 the Texas Educational Commission of the Methodist Episcopal Church South determined to establish a new university commensurate with Methodism's rising higher education standards. The Commission elected Robert S. Hyer as president of the proposed school and chose Dallas as the site. Dallas' strategic location as a southwestern urban center (1915 population, 100, 000) led Wallace Buttrick, Executive Secretary of the General Board of Education of New York, to advise Hyer in 1911 that Dallas was the best-unoccupied territory in the South for a university. Dallas citizens indicated their interest in securing the new university by pledging 622) acres of land and $300,000 in cash. Their gift of money financed the construction of SMU's first building, named Dallas Hall in appreciation of the city's generosity.

The imposing facade of Dallas Hall derived from Hyer's vision of SMU as a great university built on a grand design. Hyer planned in terms of a monumental building facing a long boulevard which would eventually be lined with some thirty additional buildings, all harmoniously related with the red brick and white columns of Georgian architecture.

Hyer's plan, executed in later years much as he envisioned it, reflects the Beaux-Arts tradition made popular by the 1893 Chicago Exposition. While Dallas Hall itself is Neo-Georgian, its hilltop setting overlooking Bishop Boulevard fits the Beaux-Arts pattern of situating a monumental building at the end of a broad avenue, thus providing a dynamic axis with long vistas.

Hyer's selection of a mall design for SMU is significant in that it differed from the traditional quadrangle pattern found on most college campuses in 1915. Moreover, his choice of Neo-Georgian architecture was a vanguard decision, for this style did not reach its prominence in Dallas until the early 1920s.

Equipped with his own detailed sketch of Dallas Hall, Hyer went to Chicago in 1911 to secure the architectural services of Shepley, Ruton & Coolidge. This firm, whose work he had long admired, was later chosen by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to direct the restoration of Williamsburg. Hyer's selection of a nationally prominent architectural firm to design Dallas Hall is particularly significant since all other buildings at SMU have been designed by local architects.

For the first decade of SMU's existence, Dallas Hall served as the only classroom facility. Thereafter, it remained the center of liberal arts studies, thus claiming all students for at least part of their college careers. Few SMU alumni have not been influenced by the intellectual activities housed within its corridors.