It can’t have been easy to get that relaxed on a stone bench. I admire their commitment, though, and plan to emulate it. I’m taking Labor Day off–see you Tuesday.
The monument lasted but the bench vanished at some point. I have no real idea when or why it disappeared, by the way.
Bonus:
The fountain is on? Really?
Should it be off?
I have not seen it on since the 1980s. I ride through campus on Sunday mornings at least twice a month and look.
Huh. I wonder if they turn it off on weekends. Does that make any sense?
Where was that bench? The inscription seems familiar.
It was in between the old Physics building and architecture. The inscription was a tribute to Lovett, from Horace I believe: He has built a monument more lasting than bronze.
Ah, that sounds right.
There is a color photo near the end of the 1981 Campanile. It is of tire tracks heading out across the grass. It made me think of leaving Rice when I took it, that was my last year. That photo was taken about where the bench was.
The Latin phrase is the same one carved into Lovett Hall in 1948 when the building was named for EOL.
From a year-in-review article in the first Sallyport of 1949 (Vol 5, No. 1, p. 3; https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/99328/sallyport-vol-05-no01.pdf):
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A marble inscription placed on the edifice reads “Lovett Hall—In grateful homage to the clear vision, unfaltering zeal and beneficient labors of Edgar Odell Lovett, first President of The Rice Institute. Exegit Monumentum Aere Perennius.”
The last phrase, taken from Horace, translates — “He has built a monument more lasting than bronze.”
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Doesn’t it seem a bit odd to celebrate a “monument more lasting than bronze” a stone’s throw away from a bronze monument (Willy)?
I have never been to Cohen House when the fountain was off. I’m guessing they only run it when CoHo is open.