When Tommy sent that beautiful shot of Brochstein Pavilion the other day he also included this lovely image of the campus taken from just above the main entrance:
It made me remember this drawing, which I found about a month or so ago. It’s a 1941 Cram and Ferguson sketch of a proposed location for the already anticipated new library group. They wanted to put it where George R. Brown is today. Although I think that in recent years we’ve found a way to make the best of it, I wish we would have done it their way.
Bonus: Last week I saw this over by Sewall, where they’re working on the roof.
I laughed, reminded of this:
I still miss Johnny.
Melissa,
I disagree: I think the library would have been too far away from the residential dormitories had it been done ‘their’ way.
BTW, reading about the murder of W.M.Rice recently, I realized that a “public library” was mentioned as one of his desires, even before the institute of higher learning. I wonder if that ever came to fruition?
What do you know about that?
Perhaps it became a moot point after Houston built a library or sumpin.
Seriously? You can almost throw a rock from the back of Fondren to the front of GRB.
As for the public library, the Rice charter designates our library as open to the public and it still is. Non-Rice folks have to sign in but they are welcome to use its resources.
What is GRB?
George R Brown Hall, I assume.
http://www.glasssteelandstone.com/BuildingDetail/2176.php
I always loved that the library seemed to set in the exact center of campus. I guess it pretty much is if you discount the stadium. Fondren is exactly where it should be.
Fondren used to have a lot of cork floors. Worn, but quiet and soft on the feet. I agree, there’s a powerful statement made when the library is in the center of the campus.
Are you going to do a story on Tommy’s photo shoot ?
Melissa,
The 1941 Cram & Ferguson plan seems to envisage some sort of bilaterally-symmetrical structure on the west end of the Academic Quadrangle, where asymmetric Fondren is now. Do you know what they planned there, if the Library Group was to be on the north of the Loop?
Thanks for your Class year, Charley.
Wish everybody did the same.
Looks to me like it remained open in kind of a “super-quad” all the way to kind of a plaza about where the Brochstein is now. Note that “Sewall,” “Anderson,” “Rayzor,” the “Student Center,” the “Brochstein Wing of Architecture,” the “new section of Baker” and approximately “old Wiess” are anticipated with placeholders in this drawing.