Rice History Corner

I’m still home sick, very fuzzy headed. Luckily I keep a stash of things to pull out on these occasions, things I don’t know anything about but which are interesting on their own. These two pictures came out of a “Miscellaneous” file in the R Association collection, hidden between some 8×12 public relations head shots of football players. They’re small and all scratched up and yet they’re still compelling:

Same guys? I don’t know.

Why no shoes? I don’t know.

Are they even playing football? I don’t know.

They look great, though.

Bonus: Big Rock Candy Mountain!

I’ve been home in bed all day with what I hope is just a bad cold. Miserable, yes, but it did allow me time enough to listen to something that absolutely blew my mind. A few days ago my colleague Norie Guthrie showed me something that turned up in the old ktru tapes that she’s been digitizing. (If you haven’t been checking out her posts on woodsononline, you should do so. The blog highlights all sorts of things in our collection and her “ktru Tuesday” entries are fantastic.)

The first thing we digitized when we got the equipment was a tape of the student meeting in the gym during the Masterson Crisis, which I talked about here. But this is what she showed me the other day:

I haven’t managed to get through it all yet but the first thing I heard was Dr. Masterson’s remarks and the questions that followed on this Saturday afternoon in February 1969:

There were a couple of moments when I found myself shaking. Here’s the thing: I no longer have to rely completely on what other people said happened that day. I can hear it myself. You can even hear him fiddling around with the bullhorn.

I’m so grateful to the people who recorded this, to the people who have kept it safe all this time, and to Norie.

I got a half dozen emails yesterday about the door that has gone missing from the back of the old Physics Building. I have to admit that this is a startling sight:

Some of my correspondents were worried because, well, you just never know around here, but I felt sure that it was just over in the Carpenter’s Shop for some repair.

I was close. It’s in the Paint Shop for refinishing:

I’m sure all of you remember a scintillating post I wrote about five (!)   years ago entitled “Dating A Picture of the Back of the Physics Building” (catchy, no?) in which that door makes a glorious appearance. But just in case you’ve forgotten and don’t feel like going back to look, here’s my favorite image of that spot:

It is very precisely dated: April 26, 1930.

Bonus: I was captivated by this charming warning sign in Abercrombie today. It made me feel I needed to be extra careful, as I would never want to strike anyone sharply.

In the course of any given week I see a lot of interesting articles in the various Rice publications that I need for research. This one I could not resist:

One hardly knows where to begin.

Bonus:

Some cheering words from Coach Heisman in the (somewhat worse for the wear) 1925 program for Rice’s annual Thanksgiving Day game with Baylor:

Go Owls.

Bonus: Where the heck did these come from? They weren’t there yesterday when I left.

We have in the Woodson folders that contain documentation of every commencement. Especially for the early years these folders became repositories for all kinds of interesting and unusual things that the librarians didn’t know what to do with. I went looking in the file for 1917 to check on a name and turned up one of those oddities.

Several members of the class of 1917 enlisted in the army and had to report for duty before commencement was held. They wound up at the Officer’s Training Camp at Leon Springs  near San Antonio and while they were there something unusual happened–Dr. Lovett arrived to hold a small ceremony and give them their diplomas. Here’s the news story:

A copy of Dr. Lovett’s short address was in there too:

As I thought about this I wondered if there might be pictures somewhere. I realize this sounds unlikely but we have some unlikely materials on our shelves, including a scrapbook that belonged to Lieutenant James Waters, one of the Leon Springs graduates. I didn’t find anything that was obviously taken on this precise day but there are a few photos of the Rice boys at the camp:

Bonus: This is the campus videographer. He claimed he was busy taking time lapse images of the clouds over Lovett Hall. I guess that’s possible.

This isn’t what I had planned to write about today but as I read this knew I wasn’t going to be able to talk about anything else right now. It’s a tribute written by Dr. Lovett in honor of George Perkins, the Rice Institute’s head janitor, at his death in 1944:

People sometimes read Lovett as chilly, and no doubt he could be, but there’s also a good deal of evidence of warmth, compassion and loyalty. His respect for George Perkins could hardly be clearer. Mr. Perkins sounds like a fine man. I expect he’d be proud to be associated with today’s campus custodial staff, who do such a fine, professional job of caring for Rice’s buildings. They are sometimes little noticed and little thanked but their work makes ours possible.

Bonus: It caught my eye because it looks like a lollipop.

I had a full day of travel today and cannot gather myself to write anything of substance. I offer only these two images. The first was taken by Paul Hester in 1983:

I took this second one from the same spot just a few weeks ago:

Bonus: For just a tiny bit of extra excitement, here are two from Tommy Lavergne of the parking garage going up behind Allen Center.

So the reason I found Mr. Cohn’s scrapbook the other day was that I was looking for something in one of the Treasurer’s Office scrapbooks from the 1940s. I can no longer recall what that thing was. However, I did find something else that’s quite surprising–a fire I’d never heard about before:

Note that we had students mowing the lawn. It might be a good idea to get them back to work again.

Here’s a great aerial image that gives us the best view I’ve found of the building that burned, the Engineering Annex:

This aerial is dated on the back–1950–and that date is clearly false. Ground was broken on Abercrombie Hall in August of 1947 and unless I’m badly mistaken there is no Abercrombie Hall in this picture. It must have been taken right around the time of the fire, either just before or just after.

Bonus: While wandering around Manhattan yesterday, I stopped in at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There I headed (as one does) straight up to the Etruscan gallery. They have this chariot up there that I’m just crazy about. Anyway, looking at it I noticed that I could see everything that was happening downstairs except upside down:

Too much excitement. I’ll be home tomorrow.

This one has it all–a motorcycle, a roadster, a guy in drag, strangely phrased and vaguely threatening posters . . . and a milk can with bucket.

They’re downtown, by the way, on Lamar Street right where the new Hilcorp Energy building is today. I drive past this spot nearly every day. The most interesting thing about this to me, though, is that it was taken by a professional photographer. I wonder what that was about (and who paid him).

Bonus: