Continuing The Tropical Theme

Posted on June 10, 2014 by Melissa Kean

In transit today, but here’s a small taste of Rice’s more tropical past—Cohen House, c 1930s:

CohenHouseSideview

Bring back the palm trees! We can all sip rum punches in the garden.

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4 Responses to Continuing The Tropical Theme

  1. almadenmike says:
    June 10, 2014 at 2:11 pm

    Palm trees were included in some of the earliest landscape concepts envisioned for the Rice Insititute. “Hedge-lined paths bordered by a variety of palm trees” were shown in a 1911 “Basic Rice Style” rendering of the planned dormitories. (Source: Figure 29 (on p. 29) and descriptive text (on p. 30) in Stephen Fox’s 1980 Architecture at Rice series Monograph 29: “The General Plan of the William M. Rice Institute and Its Architectural Development.” https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/35961/generalplanofwil00foxs.pdf )

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  2. Bill Peebles '70 says:
    June 10, 2014 at 3:02 pm

    A few palm trees would be nice. Besides the oaks, what other trees are there on campus now?

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  3. almadenmike says:
    June 10, 2014 at 3:20 pm

    Rice’s Lynn R. Lowery Arboretum and the Plant Diversity class (BIOS 336) has created a detailed, interactive campus tree map: http://fon-gis.rice.edu/ricetrees/Default.aspx There’s a “Map Identify” icon that has species and other information on a few — but not nearly all — of the trees. (I hope they’re working to complete this feature.) Chinese elm, Crepe Myrtle and Italian Cypress are three non-oak species I found in a quick look around the RMC portion of the map.

    Note: It’s also hard (impossible?) to tell whether a plant on the map is a tree or a shrub (such as azalea) … and moving your cursor just a few pixels within a graphic may turn a “No Features Found” message into a full description … something I hope they’re also planning to improve.

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  4. Bill Peebles '70 says:
    June 11, 2014 at 8:57 am

    Almadenmike, thanks.

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