Not long ago it occurred to me that I might be able to get a different look at that frame building behind the Physics Building that housed Rice’s first nuclear accelerator if I looked carefully at the construction photos of Anderson Hall. I was kind of right. You can just see it here at the top left, unfortunately mostly hidden behind some hedges:
I’d never spent much time with these images so I was surprised and enchanted to see something else–the slow disappearance of the wide view of the front of the Chemistry Building. You can actually watch it happen. Here’s Progress Photo #1, taken November 6, 1946:
And Progress Photo #10, from February 1947:
And finally this one almost exactly one year after the first:
Just for fun here’s one looking the other direction:
It seems to have been a rough year for the Italian cypresses.
Bonus:
The first photo also shows a good view of what, I presume, is the steam tunnel that flows into Anderson Hall.
11/4/47 photo appears to be before the “frogs” were installed around the entry of Anderson…
Most readers will realize that the last photo spells out “RICE”, but the astute will observe two additional features: (1) each expression resolves not merely to the corresponding letter, but specifically to the capital letter; and (2) the four expressions represent the four classical disciplines of engineering.