Bad trip to the dentist today, so I worked at home this afternoon. While I was getting some slides together for my Continuing Studies class I came across another pair of pictures taken from roughly the same spot many years apart. These are much odder, though, than the two aerial shots I posted about last week and show us campus and the medical center from an unfamiliar angle.
This first one is an aerial, and it must have been made in November, 1921 when the Flying Owls took a series of wonderful pictures on the day of the Rice-A&M football game:
The next one seems to have been taken from the top of the Mech Lab rather than from the air, but the angle is otherwise nearly the same. This one isn’t dated, but it must have been taken within a relatively short span of time. You can see the corner of Anderson Hall and the opening cut into the hedges at the left was for access to Abercrombie, which was built just a bit later in 1948. I don’t think you’d be able to see any of the Bonner Lab from this angle even if it were there, but I just have a gut feeling that it wasn’t there yet. (How’s that for the historical method, eh?) I’m going to call this circa 1950 unless somebody has a better idea.
I'll see if I can sweet talk someone into taking me up there for a look.
Here’s an aerial shot of campus in 1950 for comparison:
Bonus: I found this cabinet in the basement of the old physics building one day while the renovations were going on. I find the names on the drawers completely hilarious, but my favorites are the two at the top right:
