Farewell to the Concordia Campus

Concordia University Texas celebrated its 82-year-old campus today as they prepare to move from their landlocked location in central Austin (alongside the Interstate, no less), to a 250-acre nature preserve in northwest Austin. The day-long event included an open house of the university, allowing visitors the opportunity to tour and learn about each of the historic buildings on campus.

KXAN-TV reports that over the last year, a committee has been trying to figure out what to take from this 23-acre campus when the final class graduates April 26.

"They walked from one end of the campus to the other down all the sidewalks, through all the buildings and said here's all the things we need to keep," said Tom Cedel, university president. "And I think, if I remember correctly, it was 7 pages, single-spaced, of stuff we want to take with us. Things like windows out of the chapel, the entrance way to our original building in Kilian Hall, tiles in various buildings."

Plaques, cornerstones and even time capsules will be going -- one is not supposed to be open until 2045.

So what will the university will be doing with all of the artifacts?

"We're going to put a lot of those materials in storage, and we're looking at building an alumni center that will be a focus of these historical artifacts," Cedel said.

The one thing that will fade into history when the buildings come down in May will be the names. Concordia with start fresh with its new campus.

Incidentally, one of Concordia’s buildings is the George J. Beto Academic Center, home to classrooms, laboratories, and offices. Beto taught history at Concordia from 1939 to 1949, and later served as president of the college from January 1949 to June 1959. Completed in 2003, Concordia’s building marks the fourth building in Texas to honor Beto, including the Beto Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice at Tennessee Colony; the Beto House, a halfway house operated by the Texas Youth Commission, in McAllen; and the Beto Criminal Justice Center on the SHSU campus in Huntsville.