About a week or so ago, RUPD Officer David Anderson came to see me in the Woodson. He said he had several old photographs of Rice and asked if I’d be interested in taking a look at them. In classic Rice fashion he’d rescued some of them from the trash. Others he’d acquired in antique stores. This sounded very promising and indeed, when he brought them in I was surprised and completely delighted. A few of them are very early shots of Rice and Main Street–I’ll get to those later–but another bunch are up-close images of the construction of Rice Stadium. We already have quite a few pictures of this stadium going up, but all of them were taken from a distance. The ones Officer Anderson brought in are the only ones I’ve ever seen where you can get a good look at both the nuts and bolts of the construction and the workers themselves. I’m very grateful that he took the time to come in with them.
My favorite is this one below–it’s interesting to me the way this image evokes the feeling of one of the the earliest Rice construction projects.
October 1911, Tunnel Construction
Here’s a couple more, just for fun. That must be the Shamrock Hotel off in the distance:
And this one gives me the heebie-jeebies. Looking at it brings back the sick feeling of queasy dizziness that I felt at the top of the stadium when I went up the to take pictures. The guys up there seem totally oblivious, though. They’re clearly made of much stronger stuff than I am:
Bonus: I heard talk today that serious renovations are going to be done to the stadium soon. I’m not exactly the person you’d want to hire to redecorate your house, but I’m thinking it might be time to change out this sink.
Seeing the steam tunnels being built in the third picture brings back memories of many explorations.
I’ve spent some time in them too. I was surprised by how awful it is down there.
Well that picture probably shows the last time that tunnel was clean
That is the Shamrock Hotel in the 4th photo. I watched its destruction by wrecking ball in the late 80s.
I didn’t attend Rice, but my mother and dad did. I grew up on Dryden, two blocks from the campus. I was 11 when the stadium was being built, and I watched as the upper decks were being built. Only thing was I didn’t know they were the UPPER decks. When my dad took me over to see the construction I was blown away by seeing 40,000 seats below ground.
I would like to say thanks to you for all great looks of Rice in the past. I know it’s a labor of love, but I really appreciate your work and many others do also.
Bob Reinhold
I would love to own the Willys Jeep next to the tunnel in the last photo.
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