I’ve been poking around the sallyport recently and have realized that I’ve never talked about the renaming of the Administration Building for Edgar Odell Lovett. This was done in a ceremony held on the afternoon of Thursday, December 4, 1947, just more than a year and a half after Lovett’s retirement.
Here is President Emeritus Lovett at that occasion, looking quite pleased, along with Rice trustees Harry Wiess, Lamar Fleming, Harry Hanszen, William Kirkland, and George Brown. Dr. Houston, Gus Wortham, and Frederick Lummis are at right:
They’re standing right in front of where the plaque would eventually go but it isn’t there yet. A quick search of the files turned up the fact that they knew almost immediately what they wanted it to say. A bit trickier was the matter of how to lay it out. Here’s the first draft:
Somehow not quite right. A little squashed, no? It went through a couple more iterations before we got to this one, which spreads it out nicely over three sections of stone:
And here it is today (yesterday, actually), spread out nicely over three sections of stone:
Bonus: A faithful reader with what seems to be too much time on his hands (No, it’s not Mike Ross . . . this time) has solved the mystery of Mrs. Pitzer’s coffee. It was part of Rondelet weekend:
I guess it never occurred to me that it wasn’t always “Lovett Hall” — what was the building called prior to ’47?
The Administration Building. A little bland but accurate.
That Rice Players production of “Hamlet” has a lot of stories associated with it. Sometime, over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, I will tell you about it.
Yes, please!
How large are those wine glasses you’re so graciously offering, Hamlet?
Watch out for those enraged meistersingers.
No kidding. Even fifty years later I’m uneasy about that.
I well recall, on an auto trip with my parents in August 1957, seeing a wreath in front of Lovett Hall commemorating Dr. Lovett’s death. That was prior to my sophomore year. We had decided to make a brief stop on the campus and had not heard the news. It was quite a shock.
The acerbic Rice girl in me feels the unfairness of a curfew imposed only on women.
If it makes you feel any better, that was almost over.
Melissa,
I would have been proud to be sheltered when I attended the Institute.
And if my protectress had been wealthy, as well as beautiful, that would have been nice — but NOT absolutely necessary.
When I was a student in the early 80s, the vestiges of the desk and call system were still present in the Jones College lobby.
There were interesting tidbits of this era even when I was there. When I arrived at Hanszen I got a copy of the official rules. They still had a rule about open house (when a resident could entertain a woman in his room) and, as I recall, still had the open door rule. Needless to say it was not enforced and they went away when Hanszen went co-ed.