Monthly Archives: January 2019

Sometime recently, maybe last week, I mentioned somewhere that I wanted to write a post about how I think Sewall Hall fails by being (unlike Lovett Hall and the original Physics Building) too symmetrical. “Fails” might be too strong a … Continue reading →

Over the years I’ve come across a number of tantalizing hints about an airport or maybe just a landing strip on or very near the Rice campus back in the late teens and 1920s. Here’s one of the most interesting, … Continue reading →

Check out this beauty from the Houston Metropolitan Research Center at the Houston Public Library: It’s a nice crisp shot taken in the fall of 1948, more or less directly over the top of the Village. I wouldn’t have been … Continue reading →

I have no data about this picture, which I found in a small box labeled “Unsorted Slides” but it made me smile. My first wild guess is late ’70s: Bonus: I thought about touching it anyway. I didn’t but I … Continue reading →

I suspect that many of these rules were more honored in the breach but I’ll bet they really did keep it quiet after 7:30. It was all too easy to flunk out back in these days: Bonus: I’ve seen so … Continue reading →

In retrospect I probably shouldn’t have scheduled moving out of our house for remodeling during the first week of the semester. This is a reasonable approximation of how I feel right now: That’s Autrey Lewis, by the way, class of … Continue reading →

Update: You have to read the comments to this one. I got every possible date wrong and even which anniversary it was. It’s absolutely epic. The pictures are still awesome, though. You may remember that after his death I posted … Continue reading →

Spring semester starts today and I’m officially back at it. I’m not feeling quite as optimistic about my prospects as this Chronicle article from 1923 would suggest but neither have I “busted out” after the first term. I did, predictably, … Continue reading →

Several weeks ago I began work on a major collaborative project with the Houston Metropolitan Research Center in the Julia Ideson Building downtown. (The HMRC is the archival branch of the Houston Public Library and its website is here. Take … Continue reading →

Ralph Sturges O’Connor was born in Pasadena, California in 1926 and died in Houston this last Saturday. He’s standing at the far left in this picture, taken in the summer of 1968. It was the last Rice board meeting attended … Continue reading →