Front Cover: B Hall (1890-1952). Courtesy of Prints and Photographs Collection, DI number 02606, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
B Hall, the first dormitory on the Forty Acres, was the college residence of George Peddy, the subject of Larry McNeill's article, "The Man from Tenaha: George Edwin Bailey Peddy," in this issue of the Quarterly. Peddy washed dishes and waited on tables in this "poor boys' dormitory" to make ends meet.
Money for the dormitory was donated by Col. George W. Brackenridge after hearing it said that the University of Texas was a school for rich men's sons. Brackenridge was on the Board of Regents at the time and decided to see that low-cost housing was provided for university boys. In keeping with his desire for anonymity, the dormitory was officially named University Hall. The secret was never kept, the official name didn't last, and B Hall, for Brackenridge Hall, became the name for history.
Another B Haller was Lester G. Bugbee, secretary-treasurer of the TSHA in its early years under George Pierce Garrison. Bugbee lived in B Hall while he lectured in the history department; in later years, after B Hall closed as a dormitory and converted to offices, TSHA director H. Bailey Carroll had an office there. The building was razed in 1952.
Richard B. McCaslin, At the Heart of Texas: One Hundred Years of the Texas State Historical Association, 1897-1997 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2007), 144-145.
