The Way Back: Our House

BY Minza Mirza in The Way Back July | Aug 2025 TXEX on June 24, 2025
Texas Exes Alumni Center
A view from San Jacinto Blvd. of the future Alumni Center, 1963. 

Since its founding in 1885, the University of Texas Ex-Students’ Association had been on an 80-year long hunt for a permanent home. Wandering from a designated room in Old Main to the basement in Mary E. Gearing Hall, the association found its way to our present location across from the stadium because of a certain member’s trip to the University of California. 

In 1961, while he was visiting for a football game, John Holmes, who was president of the board at the time, took special notice of Cal’s Alumni House. UC Berkeley deemed the building a house not only because of its architectural alignment to a country home, but also because of the school’s emphasis on providing an intimate, exclusive spot on campus for their alumni. A charmed and inspired Holmes boarded the plane back to Austin with big plans.  

With the help of officials such as former UT System Vice Chancellor Larry Haskew, Holmes secured a location and funding for the alumni house. The almost-vacant lot across the street from the football stadium proved appealing as the barracks on it were already scheduled to be demolished. Tackling funding was a trickier aspect, though—due to the ambitions of alumnus and architect Fred Day, BArch ’50, Life Member.

University administration granted the project $110,000 from the Lila B. Etter trust fund, a bequest from the daughter of former UT president Leslie Waggener. Day’s elaborate plans to build the Center on Waller Creek required the association to raise another $150,000 from its members. And sure enough, donations came streaming in after fundraising efforts such as state-wide luncheons, the sign (pictured) in front of the construction site, and appearances from prominent alumni on the ABC game show Alumni Fun.

Despite some inevitable hurdles, the Center’s construction broke ground in April 1964 and concluded one year later.  

At the opening ceremony, then–executive director Jack Maguire, BJ ’44, Life Member, said, “Many years ago, Edgar Guest wrote a poem which began, ‘It takes a heap of livin’ to make a house a home.’ Today we are dedicating a very beautiful house … It’s a heap of a house, and we invite you to do a heap of living in it.”  

CREDIT: Texas Exes Archive