1900-1909

The school opened with 100 students and only eight faculty members, and Martin Hall was the first building completed. Two buildings from this decade survive: Foster Hall, dated 1902, and DeClouet Hall, from 1905, the oldest on campus. The original Martin Hall did not last. It was demolished in 1963 and replaced by the present New Martin Hall. Athletics began in 1904 with track and field, long before the campus had the stadiums and arenas it has now. The 1903 graduating class of eighteen was the first to finish.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vermilionville — 1.3 mi
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 7.1 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A bayou-side state site on former Attakapas hunting ground, with a raised Creole cottage of about 1815, a reproduction 1800 farmstead and its slave quarters, and the story behind Longfellow's Evangeline.
• St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church — 13 mi
  The Mother Church of the Acadians, founded in 1765 on St. Martin Square in St. Martinville, with a late 1870s Lourdes grotto and, a block away, the Evangeline Oak on Bayou Teche.

More markers nearby

• 1898-1899 (ULL Walk of Honor) — steps away
• 1930-1939 — steps away
• 1950-1959 — steps away
• 1960-1969 — steps away