Rice History Corner

This is one of the few times I was able to find exactly what I was looking for without any drama or weird curve balls. I hardly know how to act.

I got a lot of email about the location of The Sisters sculpture that we saw being restored earlier this week. It was installed in 1970, here:

The photo is undated but I feel it must have been taken sometime late ’70s to early ’80, based solely on the pair of Dr. Scholl’s sandals that the young woman has kicked off while she studies. I had a pair, navy blue, which were the height of chic for sophisticated high school girls everywhere in the 1970s:

This part of campus has changed tremendously over the years with the addition of the new colleges. Here are The Sisters as of last December, when I had time over Christmas break to wander around over there myself:

Bonus: I’ll be out of town until Tuesday so don’t panic if I miss a post.

I had a ridiculous day today. It was one crazy thing after another and I never stopped running. I was reduced to eating a piece of cold leftover pizza for lunch on the go. My feet hurt.

Here, though, is someone who has things totally under control. It’s Fred Hansen ’63, and although it’s undated and the location is unclear the photographer noted all the truly important data on the front:

Bonus: Earlier in the day I found myself in the basement of Ryon Lab, where I saw this exemplary piece of unobsolete technology:

Unsurprisingly, it’s used to hit things. If you zoom in, you can see that the label on top reads “Presented to the Rice Institute by Cameron Iron Works.”

Flipping through the records relating to campus sculptures a while back I came across these images of the Carl Milles work “The Sisters” being restored in early 1986. It’s normal for outdoor sculptures to receive periodic cleaning but what caught my attention here was that the restorers were women:

This was the last image on the sheet and it made me smile. She looks like she means business:

Bonus: Last weekend at Kay’s. Thanks to Tommy Lavergne.

That’s Red Bale ’36, beloved student athlete, coach, and Athletic Director. Heaven only knows what mischief he’s gotten into here. He doesn’t look to worried, though.

I made a startling discovery the other day in the Woodson. A box that I thought contained only Treasurer’s Office scrapbooks from the 1940s turned out to also contain a scrapbook kept by Arthur B. Cohn, the first business manager for Rice and before that an employee of William Marsh Rice:

Did you catch those dates? 1907 to 1926.

I almost passed out.

It’s filled with all kinds of things besides the clippings advertised on the label, although the clippings themselves are fantastic. Here’s an example, one I’d never seen before:

It’s going to take some time to get through it all. Still, I’ve already picked a favorite after only one quick trip through the book, this little advertising card from Frank Schlueter, the photographer we hired to take most of the early images of Rice. I’m so familiar with these photographs that it’s easy to take them for granted, but someone once had to go out and hire him:

This is the other side:

We’ve recently had some lads in the Woodson digging around in old track photographs. This has, of course, given me an opportunity to do the same thing. It’s been something of a revelation as I’ve been able to get a better look at the old field house that faced out on Main Street until 1950. Today’s picture, though, is interesting precisely because the field house is gone and we can get a smidgen of a peek out onto the street:

I do not know who the runner is.

The first thing to catch my eye was Ye Old College Inn, visible through the trees and the chain link fence (!). That temporary looking fence has me wondering a bit, as does the clear outline of the old building, whether this was taken relatively soon after demolition. The other thing I notice is the scaffolding on the corner of Methodist Hospital. If I recall correctly, that building opened sometime in 1951. Also of interest is the smaller building at right, which seems to be roughly where the BRC is today. To me it has the general feel of a filling station but I really have no knowledge about this at all. As always, any thoughts are welcome.

Bonus: These guys were all taking turns posing with the bull and bear statues in front of the Jones School yesterday. It was a charming sight.

There aren’t very many organizational charts floating around the archives. For decades the place was so small no one could have possibly needed one, then after it started to get complicated I guess no one wanted to write anything down. So I was instantly alert when I saw one in an old “Policies” folder. There’s a date on it but I would have known when it was made even if there weren’t:

This was clearly made in the aftermath of the Masterson Crisis, when things were in a general state of confusion. It’s a clear statement by the Board of who is in charge of campus: Acting President historian Frank Vandiver and Chancellor Carey Croneis, the former Provost and founder of the Geology Department. What they replaced was very interesting. After President Pitzer resigned in the summer of 1968, Rice was managed by a committee of three faculty members. The head of this committee was Bill Gordon, then the Dean of Science and Engineering, and the others were Bill Topazio, Dean of Humanities, and Croneis. Gordon played a prominent role in the faculty rebellion against Masterson and so would not be allowed to continue. Cronies was a Masterson loyalist, as was Vandiver. I suspect Topazio just wanted out. And I don’t blame him.

Bonus:

This is one of those nights when I have a lot I want to talk about but lack the energy to do it. Maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow!

In the meantime, to keep us all in the right frame of mind I offer the 1929-30 yell leaders, whose names I do not know and can not find out, as all my Campaniles are in packing boxes. I love these guys! Just looking at them makes me feel that I’ll have things under control any day now:

Bonus: Also a sign of great things to come, I got business cards today!

Extra Bonus:

I’ve had a long, hard week. How about a picture of some hairy guys wearing feed sacks to cheer us all up?!

It’s not dated but it must be from a time when feed sacks were still readily obtainable in Houston.

I had a great time at lunch today with Bonnie Hellums, who from 1969 until 1984 served Rice as Director of Student Activities, Head of Counseling, and Foreign Student Advisor–an awfully interesting portfolio:

I learned at least four highly relevant things over the course of a single lunch and I still have a lot of questions for her. I look forward to asking them, but she was able to answer my first one immediately. I’d been puzzling over whatever that is she’s got in her hand in this picture. Is it some kind of Aladdin lamp? A toy dragon? It turns out to be a coffee cup in the shape of a kangaroo. I don’t know how I could have missed it.

I also learned that she recently had a pocket park in Spring Branch named in her honor. Here’s the story, complete with a photo of her and Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle, ’83:

Bonus: The sky opened up after lunch and I found shelter in the dark and quiet chapel, with this lovely view of the rain in the courtyard:

So do you think I stayed in that peaceful place and waited it out? Ha. No, I did not. Too antsy to sit still, I wound up out in the stadium lot with a half inch of water in my shoes and my handbag in a puddle, where I dropped it while fishing for my keys. The only thing lacking was an audience, as everyone else was inside. I’m still smiling.