After I got over the shock of Kinsey’s sudden appearance yesterday I spent some time studying the interior dorm shots in Mr. Davidson’s slides. I conclude thus: He lived in South Hall when he arrived at Rice and stayed there until the Big Upset that inaugurated the college system in the spring of 1957. (Everyone was assigned a college and they all moved in March. I’m sure you all recall that it rained that week.) At this point he moved to the second floor of Hanszen. I have no idea how he felt about this but the physical facilities in Hanszen appear to have been a bit better.
Most of these slides are neatly labeled (thank you!) and this one says “South Hall 109, Self-Portrait, 1956”:
And these next ones are labeled “Hanszen 229, May 1957.” You can see some of the same stuff in both room–the chair, lamp, reddish little side table, possibly the desk, etc.
It’s still pretty spartan, though, especially the laundry facilities:
I’m uncertain about this scene, which is one of the few unlabeled ones. It seems to be another self-portrait and it looks like the same or a similar room but the layout and furniture are different. Anyone have any thoughts?
Bonus: Semester is over! I wonder if anyone has ever thought about just taking the hedges out altogether. It might liven the place up a little.
Interesting. I thought numbers like 229 were in the old section when I was there. But that is clearly the new section.
Was he a history major? I am intrigued by the large map of Germany and Prussia in the first picture.
My thoughts on the unlabeled picture – same brick walls, and the same ugly double-cone light fixture. Two desks, so there was a roommate. But the floor surface is different near the wall and in the center of the room. Maybe they got a carpet? The Hanszen new section rooms are suites – two 2-person bedrooms and a common area. Maybe they rearranged the suite, so the unlabeled picture is in the common area?
In the 4th photo, the bricks go up to the ceiling. Not so in the earlier photo. Both are of the living room in a new dorm suite. The Jalousie windows are a dead giveaway.
The first photo is of the corner next to the bedrooms. The door goes into a bedroom. The 4th photo includes the wall on the other side of the dorm. But this must be a different room, because the wall in the 4th photo needs a door to the outside and a door to the shared bathroom. I don’t think the living room was deep enough for that much brick. Maybe so. I guess we could look at plans.
I like that the top desk drawer on the left side is pulled out in both dorms. Amusing.
I’m guessing “229” is an error for “292,” which would be the Hanszen “suburbs” — the wing jutting off the new section.
I’ll bet my old classmate Katherine is right. I remember that the numbers were a lot different.
I was a freshman when the Big Upset occurred. We could either pick a college OR pick a roommate. Davidson probably did as I did, the latter. I was moved from West Hall (Hanszen) to Wiess. The reason the Hanszen room appears “to have been a bit better” is explained in the comments above. The Hanszen room was new. The South Hall room was definitely not.
The first photo has a bit of lost Houston history in the Shudde Bros. hat box on the bookshelf.
I lived in Baker which was similar to Hanszen in that the “new wing” was built in 1957. The first photo does appear to predate the “new” wing. In Baker the window that you can clearly see in photo one was only found in the “old” wing which dated back to the 1912 I believe. The als three photos all appear to be from the”new” wing. The desks had also changed significantly when I arrived in 1975. We ahd standard metal desks that appear to be much larger than these. We also had the oversize single beds which do not appear in these pictures – on second thought maybe they are oversized. I am surprised that no one has commented on the “tighty whities” hanging in photo 3. I would have taken my roommate to task for this.