I can’t remember what I was looking for when I found these postcards in the RMC photo file. (I would note is that they weren’t supposed to be there in the first place and we moved them to their proper home in the postcard collection after I finished scanning them.) The pictures aren’t dated but they seem to have been taken relatively soon after the building was completed near the end of 1958 . This interior shot is a real doozy, very mod:
It was the exterior shot, though, that made my day. Look here, folks:
The Ray Courtyard had not yet been built! I can’t recall ever seeing an image like this one before. If anyone has a guess about the date I’d love to hear it.
Bonus: Holiday confusion in the RMC.
We still have one of those blue couches, in case you want something impossibly large for the archives. Perhaps we could trot it out for “Some Things Never Change” shots…
The ashtrays make me cringe.
The courtyard and the Student Center looked like that in the mid Sixties when I was there….
They looked like that in the early ’70s too!
The courtyard was brick paved and had metal tables and chairs when I arrived in 1976.
I remember the birds could be particularly bad out there. By 1978 when I started hanging around the RMC desk, during bird season, one of the desk guys (typically Chris Reed) would go out several times around dusk and throw a big piece of clangy metal to encourage the birds to fly away and roost somewhere else. I was cautious and approached the building via the arched breeze ways anyway.
I excercised my Google skills and found an earlier article from this very blog which discusses the genesis of the Ray Courtyard. Melissa, I think you should build a blog index.
https://ricehistorycorner.com/2014/03/11/the-robert-h-ray-memorial-courtyard/
Well, I did link to it. The idea of an index is extremely daunting!