Monthly Archives: January 2019

Only the sharpest eyed readers will have noticed that the 1957 picture in this recent post was not taken from the same angle as the 1916 picture. Carl Knapp took his shot looking downtown from the top of the campanile, … Continue reading →

Yesterday I was idly flipping through some undated photos filed simply as “Campus aerials.” In one envelope I found a negative that didn’t look like an aerial when I squinted at it. I scanned it and discovered this oddity: This … Continue reading →

I found these two great photos in the HMRC in the Houston Post Collection. At first I was interested only in the wall around the track, part of the old stadium that was left standing after demolition in 1950. This … Continue reading →

I admit it’s unlikely (although not impossible!) but it certainly looks like President Houston, long-time registrar Samuel McCann, and Mrs. McCann are messing with someone: In reality they were at some fancy function, looks like in the old Houston Club. … Continue reading →

I’ve had a very, very long day and one of the most curious pieces of it was the discovery in the HMRC of these shots from the WoodAllen Collection, ostensibly of the Med Center but clearly showing the Main and … Continue reading →

I’ve still been working my way through the David Davidson ’58 slides and I’ll have a long post about a particular series of them soon. But in the meantime here’s one that  instantly struck a chord: What I love about … Continue reading →

I don’t care who you are, this is the type of letter you like to get: This gift was truly a milestone in Rice’s development, both because we could not become a modern university without a modern library and because … Continue reading →

Over on Facebook my post about the profoundly boring Sewall Hall brought forth some commentary about our collective failure to put the various balconies on campus to good dramatic use. In fact, I can think only one example of such … Continue reading →

I just found this in a notebook I got from a retired faculty member. It speaks, I think, for itself. It’s not dated but it must have been late February, 1965.

It was renamed the Rice Hotel after William Marsh Rice’s death in 1900 but it was called the Capitol Hotel when he was alive and its owner. Interestingly, running this hotel became one of the main preoccupations of the Institute’s … Continue reading →