We found this in the box of Really Oversized Stuff. It’s dated circa 2002 and I have no real reason to question that although there is so much detail it might be possible to narrow it down:
I can only marvel at how far the city and the campus have come. This is from 1921:
Bonus: Speaking of then and now, the quick-thinking David Long at the Shepherd School got his great picture out in the stadium lot the other day. Do you think it’s fire practice?
I suspect it is. I suspect this is too:
They could be wetting down some Italian cypresses that are staged just out of the frame, awaiting installation.
I find myself wondering what the building is that is across main from the old Field House in the second photo.
Ye Old College Inn, perhaps?
Looks like it… see http://ricehistorycorner.com/2012/12/17/ye-olde-college-inn-1920/
Thank you! Now my day is complete. :^)
It looks as if McNair Hall is finished. I believe it was dedicated in 2002.
I found myself wonder why there are what appear to be portable toilets at the entrance to the drive to the field. Seems an odd place for them.
The porta-potties appear to be bus stop shelters.
Can’t figure out why HFD would have two trucks hosing down part of the parking lot ! ?
HFD Station 33 and 16 use the east side of the stadium to run drills on a regular basis.
It certainly can’t be earlier than March 2002. My grandmother lived in West U., on the northeast corner of Rice and Sewanee until she passed away in March of 2002. The house shown in the photo is the McMansion which replaced her house from 60-70 years ago. The Harris County property records show it was built in 2003, but that’s probably when it was completed. In the photo, the site looks like the grass isn’t in yet, so I’m guessing it was still under construction.
In the aerial photo, Old Wiess College is gone. It was razed at the end of 2002, so this is no earlier than the beginning of 2003.
http://news.rice.edu/2002/10/17/wiess-college-celebrates-its-new-building-at-oct-5-dedication-ceremony/
Shame about the old field house being torn down. It looks like it would have been quite the nice space inside. Have I missed the reason why they pulled it down? Old and far away from anything?
(At one point I went field walking in that area to see if there were any identifiable traces or remains of the field house or the rifle range or the bridge over the ditch or the path to the stadium. It’s all been quite thoroughly erased (at least without excavation). There do seem to be some high areas in the marshland, but I think they correspond with later drainage works and not where the range and such seem to have been.)
In essence, they got rid of it because it broke. I wrote about it here: http://ricehistorycorner.com/2011/03/14/the-first-fieldhouse-or-on-the-perils-of-bad-drainage/