Baylor College of Medicine

Baylor College of Medicine, the only private medical school in the Southwest and the first institution to locate in the Texas Medical Center in Houston, occupied the Roy and Lillie Cullen Building there in 1947. The school was founded in Dallas in 1900, when Texas had only two other schools of medicine—the University of Texas School of Medicine, which started in Galveston in 1891, and the Fort Worth School of Medicine, which began in 1894. It was the first of eight medical schools to be organized in Dallas during the first decade of the twentieth century. With three physicians as incorporators and a charter filed with the Texas secretary of state on September 15, 1900, this proprietary school was named the University of Dallas Medical Department, even though the University of Dallas did not exist. Having leased the former Temple Emanu-el at what is now 1306 Commerce Street, the school enrolled eighty-one students for its opening on November 19, 1900. Some of these students had previously attended medical lectures elsewhere; some had already been practicing medicine without degrees. At the first commencement, held on April 18, 1901, fifteen diplomas were awarded, and in 1902–03 twenty-two more were bestowed.

On June 29, 1903, the University of Dallas Medical Department became Baylor University College of Medicine. Over time, other "Baylor units in Dallas" evolved around the College of Medicine—schools of pharmacy and nursing and a college of dentistry—all associated with Baylor University Hospital (now Baylor University Medical Center). The Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston were the only medical schools in Texas to survive Abraham Flexner's stern criticisms of low standards of medical education in his harsh and famous report of 1911. Between 1903 and 1943 Baylor awarded M.D. degrees to 1,670 graduates.