Just as a reminder, here’s what Rice looked like from the air in 1946:
Here’s another great shot from 1946, showing how near the edge of town we were even at this relatively late date:
Rummaging through the oversize box, I also found this aerial, which was taken ten years later:
The transformation of the western part of campus was so sudden and so thorough it’s almost shocking. Understandably, we don’t have very many images of the wildness that lasted so long out there and then just vanished. I do have a few, though, which were graciously shared with us by the Garcia family, all taken on campus between 1946 and 1948. It’s a profoundly different world.
Bonus: The Parkings Gods Giveth and the Parking Gods Taketh Away.
You can see the pony track really well on the 1946 image (just to the left of the stands) and the 1956 image, too.
Oh, and in the parking lot picture: notice how the palette of color is limited to silver, gray, blue, white, and red. If you look at similar photos from the ’60s and ’70s there is a much greater variation of greens, yellows, oranges, browns, medium blues, purples, and tans in auto colors. (interiors, too, instead of today’s blacks, grays, and tans.)
The construction of the “new sections” of Hanszen, Will Rice, and Baker Colleges, as well as the Hanszen and Will Rice commons, can be seen in the 1956 aerial.
Interesting comment on car colours. I remember back in 1976 I was working on a sprinkler system for an inter mural field near Kyle Field. At least 90% of the cars were maroon and white.
These images are priceless. I have enjoyed my time at Rice even more due to your work. I love to walk around our campus imagining the old times…
What a kind thing to say. Thank you so much. And I surely know what you mean about walking around campus–everywhere I go there are ghosts with me.
In the 1946 photo, there’s a more-or-less grid of several hundred plants visible in an area to the right of and down from the Mech Lab (Campanile) and up from and to the right of Lovett Hall … about where McMurtry College is now. What were they? Those plants are not visible in the 1956 photo.
(Some WWII-era Threshers mention a on-campus Victory Garden, which students hoped would improve their commons-food fare. But they said it was behind the chemistry building, not this would-be-McMurtry location.)
Those might be hay bales. See this entry …
http://ricehistorycorner.com/2011/03/15/two-aerial-views-from-1947-48/