The Buildings of Arts & Sciences — Part Four

 In this fourth installment of our series providing a brief overview of the more than a dozen Baylor campus buildings which house (totally or in part) programs within the College of Arts & Sciences, we look at three structures –– the Marrs McLean Science Building, the Sid Richardson Building, and the Baylor Sciences Building.

Marrs McLean Science Building

As America’s journey into the Space Age intensified with the dawn of the 1960s, the science education facilities of Baylor University were woefully inadequate to meet modern challenges. Science labs and classrooms made do inside the almost 60-year-old Carroll Science Building, as well as in a variety of aging smaller buildings spread across campus. 

In April 1961, Baylor President Abner McCall announced that a combination of gifts and loans from Verna McLean of San Antonio –– the widow of Texas oilman Marrs McLean, whose generosity in 1938 had already given Baylor the Rena Marrs McLean Gymnasium, named after his mother –– would guarantee the $2 million needed to build a new physical sciences building housing the chemistry and physics departments in the College of Arts & Sciences.

Groundbreaking ceremonies for the new building were held on Feb. 15, 1962, on land behind McLean Gym purchased for Baylor with money raised by the Baylor-Waco Foundation. Verna McLean was on hand to turn the first shovelful of dirt for the project, which was completed in time for the building to be used for classes in the fall of 1963. The formal dedication ceremony was held on the next Founders Day –– Feb. 1, 1964.

In 1990, the building’s auditorium was renovated and renamed in honor of legendary Baylor physics professor Robert G. Packard. During the 2012-2013 academic year, the entire building was closed for a top-to-bottom renovation.

In the fall of 2013, years after the science departments had vacated Marrs McLean for the new Baylor Sciences Building, the Baylor School of Education moved in. Today, the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Statistical Science in the College of Arts & Sciences are also housed in the building.

Sid Richardson Building

The opening of the Marrs McLean Science Building in 1963 did not by itself solve all the space needs of Baylor’s science education programs, so a new companion building –– virtually a mirror image as seen from the outside –– was soon constructed directly across Fountain Mall.

In March 1962, Baylor trustees voted unanimously to order an immediate start on plans for the new building, which would house the natural sciences departments of biology, geology and mathematics in the College of Arts & Sciences. Fundraising for the $2 million building did not begin in earnest until the summer of 1964. 

Over the 1964 Christmas holidays, the Sid W. Richardson Foundation of Fort Worth gave $750,000 to help pay for the building’s construction. Richardson, another deceased Texas oil man, had attended Baylor in 1910 and was a close friend of Baylor president emeritus W.R. White.

A groundbreaking ceremony for the Sid Richardson Science Building was held on October 29, 1965, and construction began in early 1966. The completed building was dedicated on September 22, 1967.

The new building not only housed the biology, geology and mathematics departments, but Baylor’s Strecker Museum had been relocated to its basement. The natural history museum’s new home was dedicated on February 15, 1968.

The Strecker Museum, which closed in 2003 and moved out of Sid Richardson, was eventually incorporated into Baylor’s new Mayborn Museum Complex when it opened in 2004.

The biology and geology departments vacated the building for homes in the new Baylor Sciences Building in 2004. Sid Rich was then shuttered during the 2006-2007 academic year to allow for a complete renovation, reopening in August 2007. 

Today, the renamed Sid Richardson Building is home to Baylor’s Paul L. Foster Success Center, as well the Department of Mathematics, the Institute for Aviation Sciences and College of Arts & Sciences Advising (CASA) in the College of Arts & Sciences.

Baylor Sciences Building

Much as Baylor’s aging original science facilities had demanded newer and larger buildings by the 1960s, when those “new” buildings were approaching their 35th birthdays it was clear that the University’s needs for modern science instruction and research again called for changes.

A Baylor science task force formed in 1996 studied the future needs of science instruction on campus, and in the spring of 1997 it issued a report calling for new facilities. In November 1998, the Baylor Board of Regents adopted a resolution authorizing the University to proceed with plans for expansion and renovation of science facilities.

On February 22, 2002, Baylor Regents approved borrowing the funds needed to construct a new $103 million, 508,000-square-foot science building next to the McLane Student Life Center. A groundbreaking ceremony for the Baylor Sciences Building (BSB) was held on May 17, 2002, and construction began the next month.

When the four-story building spread over three wings opened in the fall of 2004, it contained 90 research labs, 80 teaching labs, five multidisciplinary centers, a 300-seat auditorium, almost 40 classrooms and about 150 offices for faculty. An 80,000-square-foot wing was left empty, set aside for future expansion.

Baylor administrators agree that the modern science facilities provided by the BSB played a major role in attracting the world-class faculty and graduate students who helped the University achieve status as a Carnegie Research I institution in December 2021.

Today, almost all the occupants of the BSB fall under the administrative umbrella of the College of Arts & Sciences. These include: the academic departments of biology, chemistry & biochemistry, environmental science, geosciences, physics and astronomy, and psychology & neuroscience; the Office of Medical Humanities; the Office of Prehealth Studies; the Center for Reservoir and Aquatic Systems Research (CRASR); the Center for Mass Spectrometry; the Center for Microscopy and Imaging; the Molecular Biosciences Center; the Center for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; and the BRIGHTS Center.

ABOUT THE COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY

The College of Arts & Sciences is Baylor University’s largest academic division, consisting of 25 academic departments in the sciences, humanities, fine arts and social sciences, as well as 11 academic centers and institutes. The more than 5,000 courses taught in the College span topics from art and theatre to religion, philosophy, sociology and the natural sciences. The College’s undergraduate Unified Core Curriculum, which routinely receives top grades in national assessments, emphasizes a liberal education characterized by critical thinking, communication, civic engagement and Christian commitment. Arts & Sciences faculty conduct research around the world, and research on the undergraduate and graduate level is prevalent throughout all disciplines. Visit the College of Arts & Sciences website.