Author Archives: Melissa Kean

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 →

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 →