UTEP History: UTEP Architecture

The "Chronological History of UTEP Buildings" Timeline was compiled by Willie Quinn, a member of the UTEP Heritage Commission, between the period of January 2002 and September 2005, for the 90th Anniversary of the school. It was recently updated to July 2015 for UTEP's Centennial Celebration. The final product is a computer spreadsheet equivalent to the physical size of 32 individual legal size paper sheets, when joined together forms a wall chart about 3 feet wide by 10 feet long.

The timeline’s primary purpose was to identify the dates that all the buildings on the UTEP campus were constructed, so we could establish an accurate date for many of the campus aerial photos in the Heritage Commission files that did not have any date recorded. The timeline begins in 1913 with the founding of the school on the original building site just east of the old Fort Bliss on Lanoria Mesa in northeast El Paso and continues through 2015 with the buildings on the current site of UTEP on the west side of El Paso. This timeframe covers the construction of the original four (4) buildings on the current campus to the over 86 buildings now existing, ending with the construction of Miner Canyon Student Apartments in 2015.

The basic research consisted of compiling data from the Annual Financial Reports (AFR), Institutional Self-Study Reports (IS-S), Flowsheet yearbooks (F/S), Origins book, Fugate's book Frontier College, Nancy Hamilton's book Pictorial History of UTEP, College Catalogs, University Directories, personal conversations, etc. Nancy Hamilton also developed a schedule of "When Were They Built? (1917-1997)”, which was very helpful. More recently we received much help from the staff and management of Facility Services, Spatial Resources, and Drafting Divisions.

Associated with this building construction information are the dates of any building name changes over the years, and in some cases when the original names were moved to a new building in a different location on Campus. The timeline also reflects when a building was razed and a new building with a different name was built on the same site.

The very top information "Line" reflects the eight (8) 'unofficial' and/or the five (5) 'official' names of the educational institution we now call UTEP, or more officially "UT El Paso." All of these names from the original State School of Mines and Metallurgy, to the College of Mines, thru Texas Western College, and finally to the University of Texas at El Paso are situated along the "Line" to permit the viewer to note the specific date that the name of the school was changed.

The next three (3) long, narrow Rows of information shows what historically significant events were going on (1) in the World, (2) in El Paso, and (3) at UTEP, during any point in the school's history from 1913-2015, which was associated with the building construction. This puts the building construction into the proper perspective relative to what was going on all around us at the same time in history. For example, in 1914, when the school was started, World War I in Europe began, and in 1917, when the first buildings were opened on our current campus, the U.S. entered World War I.

The timeline also has footnotes consisting of (1) General Comments on Timeline Criteria, (2) Specific Reference Sources, (3) Types of Buildings Not Shown, (4) Building Details for those buildings with a more complicated history, and (5) Details on the School Name Changes. These footnotes are generally located on the lower-left side of the chart.

If any questions, comments, and/or necessary corrections result from the viewing of this Building Timeline, please refer them to the UTEP Heritage Commission in care of the Alumni Relations in the Peter & Margaret de Wetter Center on the UTEP Campus (https://alumni.utep.edu/alumni-relations/get-involved/heritage-commission).