Ashbel Smith Building

When Texas voters chose Galveston over Houston for their first state medical school in 1881, architect Nicholas Clayton designed what he considered his masterpiece. The Ashbel Smith Building, also known as Old Red, opened in 1891 with just 23 students and rooms almost devoid of equipment, but the young staff set rigorous standards anyway. The need for education was dire: in 1891, 80 percent of doctors in Texas had under a year of formal training in medicine.

Nine years later, the 1900 hurricane destroyed most of the island and killed up to 8,000 people – but Old Red’s walls held. A telegram declared ‘The University of Texas stops for no storm,’ and classes resumed two months later. By 1910, it was the only medical school in Texas deemed fit to keep training physicians – proving that rigorous standards matter more than fully stocked shelves.