First, let me apologize for the sorry quality of these images, which you can probably tell are just iphone pictures. This was the last thing I did before I left for Washington and I was rushing so fast I just didn’t have time to scan them properly.
I was pretty excited to find this brochure in a box of materials that John “Grungy” Gladu recovered from somewhere deep in the bowels of the stadium. (More odd items from this box next time.) I’ve written about the Tidelands, its various Rice connections, and its later incarnation as Rice’s Graduate Student Housing before. I even found some great black and white images taken in its heyday in the Houston Metropolitan Research Center collection some years ago. But this was the first time I’ve seen the full glory of the thing in color. And it’s amazing.
It’s hard to pick out my favorite thing here but it might be the credit cards accepted, which might actually help nail down a date now that I think about it.
Here you go:
Bonus: A loyal reader sends in this picture of the bent, safely reinstalled.
Astroworld opened June 1, 1968. IAH opened June 2, 1969. Judging from the mention of an award won in 1968 and the presence of the Astroworld photo but no IAH on the map, I am guessing late 1968 or early 1969.
My dad and I stayed at The Tidelands in August 1970, the night before I showed up at Rice for freshman week. It was a good ol’ motel.
I recall that we raided the ice machine outside at the Tidelands from time to time for party ice!
I could frame that picture of the bent better next time, so that the sculpture in the background is framed properly in the arch.
Dicky Maegle had a life-size cardboard cutout of himself in his Dallas Cowboys uniform in his office. Welton Humble and his buddies used to eat lunch there all the time.
What strikes me about the first Tidelands image is that some of the text seems modern, yet some of it seems antiquated. Toll-free 1-800 numbers were introduced in 1966 (intrastate) and 1967 (interstate), and they are still used today. ZIP (“Zone Improvement Plan”) codes were introduced in 1963, and they are still used today. Telephone exchange names, though, were phased out in the late 1960s. (I still remember my family’s telephone number in the 1960s as being in the DRake 6 exchange. We also had a party line, shared with other users. We sometimes had to wait for another user to hang up before we could use the line. I also remember having to shout when talking by phone with my grandfather in another state.)
The 1-800 number seems pretty clearly an after-applied rubber stamp. Based on the odd “1962-1967 and 1968” (why not just 1962-1968?), I’d bet this was printed in 1968 or 1969, but was still in use a few years later and rubber-stamped with the new 1-800 number.
We stayed at the Tidelands briefly when moving to Houston around 1960 before my folks rented the first house and then buying the next one. At least I think it was a rental in Sharpstown. I was pretty young.
Also, JAckson 6 phone prefix later (when?) changed to 526. Markers seems right on target. 1969, it must be.
JAckson 6 is, of course, the same as 526, as J and A map to 5 and 2, respectively, even on a modern telephone keypad. In the late 1960s, my family’s telephone number changed from DRake 6 to 376, but nothing really changed at all, as D and R map to 3 and 7, respectively.
I stayed at Tidelands when I interviewed in 1968 and when I joined the faculty in early 1969.
I am glad that the Bent has been placed near the new Engineering Building (formerly Abercrombie).
You may remember that the Rice switchboard number was JA8-4141
One of comedian Brother Dave Gardner’s albums was recorded at the Tidelands.
Bob Newhart also recorded a live concerts in 1960 at the Tidelands club