Texas Tech University - Campus

Campus

The Lubbock campus is home to the main academic university, law school, and medical school (Health Sciences Center). This arrangement makes it the only institution in Texas to have all three units (undergraduate institution, law school, and medical school) on the same campus. The campus, which boasts Spanish Renaissance architecture, was described by American author James A. Michener as the "most beautiful west of the Mississippi until you get to Stanford" and by Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustrated as "easily one of the ten most beautiful campuses" he had seen. Many buildings on campus borrow architectural elements from those found at University de Alcalá in Alcalá de Henares, Spain, and Mission San José in San Antonio. A large section of the campus built between 1924 and 1951 is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Texas Technological College Historic District. This area is roughly bounded by 6th Street on the north, University Avenue on the east, 19th Street on the south, and Flint Street on the west. In 2008, the Professional Grounds Management Society awarded Texas Tech the Grand Award for excellence in grounds-keeping.

In 1998, the Board of Regents of the Texas Tech University System created the Texas Tech University Public Art Collection to enliven the campus environment and extend the educational mission of the university. It is funded by using one percent of the estimated total cost of each new building on campus. The collection features pieces from artists such as Tom Otterness and Glenna Goodacre. The Texas Tech University Public Art Collection is ranked among the ten best university public art collections in the United States by Public Art Review.

The university also hosts the Museum of Texas Tech University, which was founded in 1929 and is accredited by the American Association of Museums. The museum is home to over three million objects and specimens and houses the Moody Planetarium, art galleries, a sculpture court, and a natural science research laboratory. The museum also operates the Val Verde County research site and the Lubbock Lake Landmark, an archaeological site and natural history preserve in the city of Lubbock. The site has evidence of 12,000 years of use by ancient cultures on the Llano Estacado (Southern High Plains), and allows visitors to watch active archaeological digs. Visiting scientists and tourists may also participate in the discovery process. Lubbock Lake Landmark is a National Historic Landmark, which lists it on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a designated State Archaeological Landmark. Texas Tech is also the location of the Southwest Collection of historical archives and the sponsoring institution of the West Texas Historical Association. Located on the northern edge of the campus is the National Ranching Heritage Center, a museum of ranching history. The site spans 14 acres (0.057 km2) and is home to 38 historic structures that have been restored to their original condition. Structures represented at the center include: a linecamp, a dugout, a bunkhouse, a blacksmith shop, a cowchip house, a schoolhouse, corrals, shipping pens, windmills, chuckwagons, and a coal-burning locomotive.

The university maintains a number of libraries, some general-purpose and some dedicated to specific topics such as architecture and law. Among the most notable of these are the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library and the Vietnam Center and Archive, the nation's largest and most comprehensive collections of information on the Vietnam War. On August 17, 2007, the Vietnam Center and Archive became the first US institution to sign a formalized exchange agreement with the State Records and Archives Department of Vietnam. This opens the door for a two-way exchange between the entities.