Throughout its long history, the Baylor University campus has been remarkably blessed, avoiding tornadoes, the worst impact of the regular Brazos River flooding, and the ravages of fire.
Waco’s “other” university – and Baylor’s greatest rival – AddRan College was forced to leave Waco after a massive fire in March 1910 devastated the college’s primary building. AddRan – by that point renamed Texas Christian University – moved to Fort Worth later that year, and thus remained the Bears’ fiercest natural rival.
More than a hundred years ago, however, Baylor was not so lucky.
In April 1903, the biggest stories in the newly chartered Baylor Lariat chronicled the grand opening of two matching buildings on the Baylor campus: George W. Carroll Science Hall and F.L. Carroll Chapel and Library. Under the able direction of Baylor President O.L. Cooper, the twin buildings had begun construction in 1901, fueled by two separate gifts of $75,000 from F.L. Carroll and his son, George. Carroll Library was designed, in part, to house the school’s burgeoning library, which had originally been created with a gift of 3,000 volumes to Waco University by President Rufus Burleson’s older brother Richard. Other major donations of books came from the rival Philomathesian Literary and Adelphian Theological societies.
When Samuel Palmer Brooks assumed the presidency in 1903, the chapel – with its mandatory attendance requirement – assumed even greater importance in the daily life of Baylor’s population of more than one thousand students. Also crammed into Carroll Library – along with various classrooms, offices, and an alcove containing Dr. A.J. Armstrong’s already significant collection of Robert and Elizabeth Browning letters and ephemera – was John K. Strecker’s sprawling museum collection of reptiles, amphibians, and other specimens. At one point, Strecker complained to Brooks that “hundreds of specimens are lying in the drawers of cabinets in my office.” Strecker sadly concluded his appeal by writing, “I am temporarily ‘at the end of my wits’ as far as display space is concerned.”
The stately rhythm of campus life then resumed with students pouring in and out of the chapel, giving little thought to the handsome building that was then on the edge of the Baylor campus.
Until Feb. 11, 1922…
A fire apparently began that afternoon in the ceiling of the third floor, or perhaps the dome of the metal roof where workers had been making repairs. A breathless special edition of The Lariat rushed into print that evening was emblazoned with the headline, “Baylor Chapel Lies in Smouldering Ruins.”
The fire was discovered about 4 p.m. when it spread to the chapel balcony. “Every fire department in the city was called to the scene of the conflagration,” according to the article, “and all battled heroically with the assistance of hundreds of students and outsiders for over three hours.”
A front-page article in the Waco News-Tribune was equally graphic:
“Carroll Chapel, the pride of Baylor University, was dismantled and gutted by fire yesterday afternoon and only by heroic effort were the walls of the building saved from utter destruction. The big building, standing majestically on the corner of Fifth street and Speight avenue, was a wreck in an hour after the fire was discovered.”
Multiple eyewitness accounts of the tragedy marveled at how, at great personal risk, a host of firefighters and students continued to dash into the building and salvaged whatever books and other items they could retrieve. The article noted that one student bravely grabbed a “priceless” portrait of Browning, which had only been donated to the university by the class of 1919 two years earlier. Another “Browning memento,” the beautiful “Clasped Hands” sculpture, was hastily recovered by still another student.
“Through the timely work of students and friends,” the reporter adds, “the Browning treasure, including every volume in the library, were saved.”
Elsewhere in the building, law students braved the flames to rescue the contents of the new law library and “rushed to this part of the building as soon as the fire started,” the Lariat article says.
The uncredited student journalist provided a number of intimate details about the disaster in his account: the sound of “frenzied firemen,” who screamed at the crowd to stand back, then “risking their lives to stem the course of flames;” the sight of every window on the campus filled with students, faculty, and staff staring in horror at the inferno; and the image of “local alumni joining in with the rest of the student body in an attempt to save the contents of the library.”
Alas, not all of the books in the original library could be salvaged before Brooks himself, fearing for their safety, stopped students from entering the burning building, even as firefighters were forced to cordon off the perimeter as the upper floors began crashing down.
The Lariat indicated that the “greatest loss” occurred in the chapel, where 18,000 new seats – valued at $5 each – were destroyed, along with two upright grand pianos and four other pianos. Also lost in the flames was another venerable Baylor institution, a large pipe organ worth more than $5,000.
“Hundreds of students were dripping with wet with water and perspiration,” according to the article, “as they helped carry the ladders and hose and brought books from the burning building.”
The 1922 Round Up has more than a dozen mentions of the historic fire, including this somewhat light-hearted description of senior Manley E. Weaver: “Manley has really gone through fire – two fires, in fact – to get his degree.”
The Round Up also trumpeted the efforts of Baylor’s female students “who did their full share of the work of rescue.”
Miraculously, no lives were lost. According to The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, three firefighters were badly injured. One fireman suffered a serious head injury when struck by a piece of tin roofing, another had his collarbone dislocated, while a third’s hand was seriously cut.
At the end of the three hours, a crowd estimated at 20,000 had gathered outside the ruins of Carroll Library and Chapel. Many wept openly. Because of the efforts of every fire department in Waco, the walls had survived, but the interior was completely gutted. The books that remained in the building but were not consumed by the flames were rendered useless by the water from fire department hoses.
The Baylor Alumni Association, as it has been so many times in Baylor’s history, was the first to respond, within hours drafting a lengthy statement pledging its support to “raise sufficient funds to replace the former building with two fireproof structures.”
At a makeshift chapel service two days later, Brooks read from telegrams he had received from Baylor alumni across the country pledging their support for the reconstruction, including one from Baylor’s fiercest critic, Dr. J. Frank Norris of First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, who said that he had taken a collection for the university’s rebuilding efforts at his church’s regular Sunday night services.
In the week that followed, the Baylor Family slowly came to grips with what had happened – and what it meant for the future. The trustees passed resolutions honoring the students and expressing their “grateful appreciation for the faithful, efficient and courageous services rendered … on the occasion of the disastrous fire that destroyed the beautiful Carroll Chapel and Library. Your unselfish devotion to Baylor in the hour of her great calamity is such a demonstration of your loyalty as to palliate in a large degree the effect of the awful blow that has fallen upon us.”
The administration issued few official statements in the immediate aftermath of the fire, though Brooks told the university that he hoped that it would be possible to fund both a separate library and chapel. Unfortunately, Brooks said that the building only had $100,000 in insurance, less than a third of what was necessary to repair Carroll and replace the lost contents.
Baylor alumnus G.H. Penland was selected by a “Committee of Twenty” led by Brooks to be the General Director of the Baylor Alumni Rebuilding Campaign and was charged with securing the funding to rebuild and refurnish Carroll. In mid-March, Penland issued a lengthy statement to the friends of the university: “Baylor is forced to direct her appeal largely to her sons and daughters. It is a call for aid so urgent, so heart-wringing in this emergency that surely nowhere in all the land will a deaf ear be turned.” As one article observed, Penland “has entered on his duties with the same vigor which characterized his leadership of patriotic movements” during the recent Great War.
At Baylor’s invitation, the executive committee of the Texas Baptist General Convention moved its scheduled February 22-23 meeting from Fort Worth to Waco for all of the committee members to witness firsthand the devastation … and begin planning how to replace Carroll Chapel and Library.
On March 24, a mass meeting of Waco business leaders met at the Hotel Raleigh to “discuss the means and methods of the campaign” to support Baylor’s reconstruction efforts.
Statewide, various Baptist organizations and churches also responded by raising money to support Baylor’s relief efforts. Texas newspapers joined the effort, urging their readers to contribute to the campaign.
But in subsequent editions of The Lariat, it became clear that it was the Alumni Association that spearheaded the efforts to raise the necessary funds – estimated between $250,000 and $400,000 – to rebuild Carroll Library.
A month after the tragedy, legendary Baylor music professor Enid Eastland was moved to write a long elegy to the building, “The Sleeper,” which concluded with this touching verse:
Now you’re quiet, Carroll chapel,
Like a mighty man of wars,
Standing in the twilight’s shadow,
Head uncovered to the stars,
We’ll go softly, Carroll chapel,
O’er your dreams a vigil keep –
Tread more lightly, laugh more gently,
Carroll chapel is asleep.
Ultimately, of course, the money was raised, though the continued growth of the student body meant that the chapel would no longer be housed with the university’s library in the renovated building. On Dec. 12, 1923, Baylor formally opened the restored Carroll Library to much fanfare, including a celebration of President Brooks’ 60th birthday. Highlights of the new building included two reading rooms, an elevator, several classrooms, and a special set of rooms for the Browning and Texas History collections.
And so, Carroll Library resumed its role in Baylor life. A separate home for the Browning materials – the Armstrong-Browning Library – would not open in 1951, after decades of fund-raising by the indefatigable Dr. Armstrong.
The building was dramatically remodeled again in 1993 and, in addition to the Texas Collection, now houses the Baylor Institute for Oral History and the Keston Center.
A historical marker outside the building makes mention of the 1922 fire, which remains the worst such disaster in Baylor history but one which – as has always been the case – only served as a catalyst for even better days to come.
