This is a congratulatory letter that Edgar Altenburg, long of the Biology Department, sent to English Professor George Williams, praising him effusively (it’s a bit much, surely) for a piece that appeared in the Rice University Review:
I never got as far as the article he’s talking about because I was stopped in my tracks by the address on the stationery:
Genetics Laboratory
2480 Times Boulevard
Uh . . . what?
I’ve never heard a whisper of this before. I don’t even know enough to know what to ask, but if anyone can tell me about this genetics lab in the middle Rice Village please do.
Bonus: Winter berries.
By 1964 The Texas Heart Association was located there.
https://www.utsystem.edu/sites/utsfiles/offices/board-of-regents/board-meetings/dockets/9-1819-1964.pdf
Interesting. There’s no way to know how old the stationery was–Altenburg got here in 1917!–but it does say “University.”
The stationery has zip codes printed on it, so it was printed between mid-1963 & June 1967. Interesting mystery: genetics research on Rice Village shoppers?
How do you know that??
Zip codes were introduced in 1963, and the date on the letter brackets the latter days claren56 identified as the potential print dates for the stationary.
Was there an “LS Browning” associated with Rice?
There appears to be a reference to that name and this address here:
Trypanosome Transmitted by Phlebotomus: First Report from the Americas
John R. Anderson1, Stephen C. Ayala1
+ Author Affiliations
Science 06 Sep 1968:
Vol. 161, Issue 3845, pp. 1023-1025
DOI: 10.1126/science.161.3845.1023
Why does the top address have a 77001 zip code? That’s always been downtown hasn’t it?
Rice’s P.O. Box (941? 1892? multiple boxes?) were at the downtown post office in the late 1970’s, hence 77001.
I suspect the general delivery address in the 1960’s was simply:
Rice University
Houston, Texas 77001
simpler times
Not sure when, but the format of the Zip for PO boxes changed, so that mail to Rice, even if you left off the box number, was included, if you used the 9-digit zip: 77251-1892
Winter berries? What winter
Yeah, it hasn’t been much of one!
Professor Altenburg’s wife was apparently a former student of his who was also a genetics researcher. 2480 Times Boulevard first shows up in 1951; it’s a generic commercial office building with a variety of sizes of space available. Knowing as I do that Rice has quietly owned chunks of the Village for a long time, it wouldn’t surprise me if Rice owned it, at least at the time. And there is a longstanding practice of using nearby spaces: Greenbriar building, University State Bank, Milford and Chaucer houses for the Shepherd School, Banks apartments for women, etc.