That's Susann Glenn from FE&P taking pictures of the refrigerator this kid somehow got up there. (This was a completely authorized expedition, by the way. This place is locked up tight and someone had to come let us in.)
All these posts about the chapel got started by a trip to see the inside of the tower at the RMC. Grungy came into the archives with some cockamamie story about a student living in there years ago, so we went to check it out. It turned out, amazingly, to be true. There was plenty of evidence of inhabitation, including a refrigerator, old stereo equipment, wiring, rudimentary plumbing and a space where there had once been an air conditioner. A bold and interesting idea, doomed to failure.
But here’s what really caught my eye:
Here’s where it came from:
It’s the faculty chamber in Lovett Hall, now called the Founder’s Room. It’s been remodeled multiple times and I have no idea when they were taken out. I’ve been told that the chandelier attachment that once belonged to this fan is hanging in the Humanities Building. It sure looks like it. I’d like to get that fan down, but I don’t know how it would be done. Which just makes me marvel all the more about the guy who got it up there.
Those are the best light fixtures I’ve seen all day.
And the person who put it up there proudly states that he did it by himself. It took a team to remove the chandelier in order to hang pieces in the Humanities building.
The refrigerator was pulled up the outside of the bell tower with a block and tackle, because it would not fit through the small hatch at the bottom of the tower.
This was done during the day and no one seemed to notice.
Hopefully, he’ll notice this post and fill in more of the details.
And we’ll both take issue with the notion “doomed to failure”.
Yes, I hope he chimes in too.
And just to be clear, I meant “doomed to failure” not in the sense of “couldn’t be done,” but rather as “would be inevitably discovered and shut down.” It’s pretty clear that it could be done!
However, I believe the ‘apartment’ was occupied for over a year and its ‘discovery’ was related more to a regime change at the RMC than someone independently discovering it and shutting it down. Thus I would also take issue with it being doomed to failure
You might want to look in the Campanile around 1977 (maybe 1978). I believe there are references there to ‘Rice Memorial College’.
I’ll definitely look that up. So was it the case that the first regime at the RMC knew about it and didn’t object? That would rule.
Somehow I missed this post way back when. There was a porch swing up at the top of the tower with a great view. I remember that for some odd reason the steel staircase that was in the upper level did not reach the trap door to the top, so there was a rather cobbled together ladder to make the final ascent.
For more info on the chapel tower space, check out the lead article (“The Apartment in the Bell Tower: A Campus Legend” by Mary Dix and Karen Rogers) in the Fall/Winter 2011 edition of “The Cornerstone”, published by the Rice Historical Society.
https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/88468/wrc04756.pdf?sequence=15
I wonder if this blog post triggered the production of Dix & Rogers’ article.
As Kean, Dix, Rogers, and I have all served on the board of the Rice Historical Society, it was likely a comment in a board meeting that got the ball rolling.