Wayland Baptist College was established in 1906 and named for its initial donors, James H. and Sarah F. Wayland. It is the oldest university in continuous operation on the High Plains of Texas. Gates Hall (1911), the administration building, was named after the college’s first president, I. E. Gates. The three-story, red brick Classical Revival building has five recessed bays framed by advancing two-bay end pavilions: the central section is fronted by a three-story portico supported by six Corinthian columns. In 1951 Wayland University became the first four-year liberal arts college in the South to desegregate, admitting African American students.
The most audacious building on the university’s campus is the J. E. and L. E. Mabee Heritage Center, home of the Museum of the Llano Estacado (1976, Brasher, Goyette and Rapier; 2016 addition, Lavin Architects). The truncated monolith, with its battered walls of precast concrete panels, is partially below grade to simulate the half-dugout shelters of the area’s indigenous agriculturalists who occupied the High Plains more than five hundred years ago. A pedestrian bridge spans the false moat, leading to exhibits on area geology, ancient and modern flora and fauna, and settlement history from the nineteenth century. An addition (Jimmy Dean Wing) compromises the basic concept of the museum’s design by covering both the moat and the sloped west wall with a square box. The same architects designed the college’s Mabee Learning Resources Center (1996).