It was 1910, and Josiah Blake Tidwell had just taken over as head of Baylor’s Religion Department. Up to that point, the primary purpose of the religious studies programs at Baylor was to prepare students to become ministers, and the entire Baylor Bible Department had just moved to Fort Worth to become an official independent theological seminary.
Neither Tidwell nor his colleagues could have imagined the way the department would grow and flourish into what it is today, drawing students from all over to prepare them for careers in ministry and beyond.
As the program continued to grow under Tidwell’s leadership and heightened focus on undergraduate academics, his students decided it was time they had a more permanent location on campus — one that honored Tidwell and his legacy. In 1936, 125 of his students gathered at the Baptist General Convention of Texas at Mineral Wells, where they began discussing plans for a new bible building.
With a plan in place, the students launched a fundraising campaign to raise the money they needed.
Read more: Tidwell Bible Building is Still Standing Tall & Proud in 2020
But the funding did not come easily. It was not until the mid ‘40s that a Tidwell Bible Building Committee got involved. As the program grew, so did the need for classroom space, and establishing a bible building on campus could no longer be postponed. The Tidwell Bible Building Committee strategized how to acquire the funding the department needed — using whatever marketing strategies they could come up with to reach the funding goal as soon as possible.
Eventually, thanks to donations from Baptist churches across the state, the building had the money it needed, and a groundbreaking ceremony took place in 1949. It was officially completed and formally dedicated on October 22, 1954.
The seven-story building took around $600,000 to complete, with new classroom capacity for up to 800 students. The structure was designed by the architectural firm Birch D. Easterwood and Son. They wanted to create something that visually displayed Baylor’s commitment to the Christian tradition without looking like a church.
One of the most notable features of the building is the 68 limestone panels featuring biblical scenes from both the Old and New Testaments. Those same panels, developed and dreamed up by a Baylor religion professor during the building’s construction, still adorn the building today.
