Rice History Corner

I was very saddened to learn of the death last week of Katherine Tsanoff Brown. The daughter of Rice’s first philosophy professor, Radoslav Tsanoff, and his formidable wife Corrinne, Katherine was raised at the young Institute with the other faculty children almost as family. These were in many cases bonds that would last a lifetime. Here she is at Christmas time in 1930, posing with her sister and the daughters of Rice Dean Robert Caldwell at Grenoble:

She entered Rice as a student in the fall of 1934, only fifteen years old. She had a stellar career academically–she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in the fall of 1937–as well as socially as a member of the Elizabeth Baldwin Literary Society.

She went on to earn an MFA from Cornell and returned to teach in the architecture school at Rice in 1963, later becoming the first art historian appointed to the new department of Art and Art History. Like her father she was an excellent teacher, honored with awards and with the gratitude of generations of students. Most touching to me are the records of her decade as Dean of Undergraduate Affairs, meticulously organized and deeply revealing about the state of student life in the difficult years of the 1970s. Brown was temperamentally almost perfectly suited for this role, calm and gentle but with exacting standards and respect for both the intellect and the emotions of the students. I’m not sure but this may have been her finest role here.

Katherine Brown was quiet and strong and almost impossibly elegant. She was a mediator. She was a scholar who remained committed to the primacy of undergraduate education. We were lucky to have her.

Bonus: She was a talented artist too. Here’s a little place card she made for her friend Ray Watkin, the daughter of architecture professor William Ward Watkin, for a luncheon on the occasion of Ray’s graduation from Rice in 1938. She’s gently teasing Ray here for her early ambition to join the diplomatic service.

Extra Bonus: Here are Katherine and Ray at the President’s House for a dinner in November, 1999.

This could hardly be more interesting:

Here’s what the campus looked like when the students arrived that fall:

Quite different from today, obviously, but what really struck me was something else. Here are the rules of student conduct:

And here’s the description of the Administration:

In many ways this was an institution closer to the Rice of 1918 than that of today.

Bonus:

A couple of weeks ago retired Physics Professor Steve Baker sent over a package of materials. It took a while for me to get to it but when I did I was just delighted with its contents. Most of it was new to me and I’m going to have to take him to lunch to get a few questions answered.  My favorite thing, though, was instantly recognizable:

Note the holes where it was pinned on!

We’d seen them before, of course, in pictures from the Masterson demonstration in February, 1969 but didn’t have one in the collection:

Most of the people in these images are unidentified, by the way, so if you know someone please chime in.

And here’s one I just came across recently, Ira Gruber no doubt making a compelling point to a group of students:

I’m pretty sure he still has that jacket.

Bonus: This little placard completes our collection of Masterson pins, begun a couple of years ago with the glorious find of Alan Grob’s lapel button, as described here.

Extra Bonus: As some undergraduate astutely noted on a wall in the basement of the Physics Building, Dr. Baker rocks.

This looks intense but fun. It’s unlabeled and undated, naturally. If you can identify any of these kids (or if you were one yourself) let me know.

Bonus: Roofing materials for Rayzor Hall.

Yesterday afternoon I left campus right after lunch to start packing for our move to a new house. The movers will do a lot of it for you but I can’t find a way to trust anyone else with my books and papers. Ordinarily I wouldn’t mention this but things did not go as  I expected. There are several shelves in my home office stuffed with various Rice publications, from Campaniles to General Announcements to what you would have to call “miscellaneous.” As I was putting them into boxes this caught my attention:

I knew immediately where it had come from– Professor Jim Castañeda’s office, which I packed up after he passed away a few years ago. It then went to the Woodson where we determined that we already had a copy and didn’t need another, which is how it wound up on my shelf at home.

Well, you’re probably wondering, so what? Here’s what: quite some time ago I got an email from a woman at UT about a family story that had her cousin, an African American, attending a summer Spanish class at Rice in the summer of 1964, a year and a half before we desegregated.  I looked every place I could think of but wasn’t able to confirm the story for her. As I flipped through this very long document, though, I discovered a page of photographs of all the participants and sure enough, there was a black woman. I stood straight up, grabbed my purse, headed for the car, and went back to Rice as fast as I could.

And there, in the back room of the Woodson, was the 1964 report for the same course, also with a page of photos. I don’t generally like to assign racial categories based on blurry images, but there are at least a couple of black women in this and one of them is Alma Henry, the cousin of my correspondent:

Here’s everyone on the steps of Chem Lecture:

The course provided intensive training for teachers of Spanish and as a federal program was certainly bound by a non-discrimination clause. My best guess here is that President Pitzer was well aware of this and in the tense atmosphere that surrounded the charter change litigation simply decided 1.) to go ahead and accept participants without regard to race and 2.) not say a single word about it to anyone.

Bonus: These students all lived for six weeks at Rice, on the third floor of Jones. Mrs. Henry, who taught Spanish at B.C. Elmore Junior High, stayed in Room 334. It looks like they all had a great time:

As I was putting Vetta Masterson’s journal back in its place yesterday,  I stopped to look through a scrapbook that’s part of the Masterson collection. I’d seen these particular pictures before but this time I was in the right frame of mind to understand them:

Look how muddy it was! As you’ll certainly recall from yesterday, Mrs. Masterson noted the rain during their move into Hanszen House. I’m pretty sure these above are the only images I’ve ever seen of the March 1957 move from the dorms into the newly created colleges.

I’m hoping none of those cars came out after 1957.

Bonus: Change of heart. Phone’s back. 713-348-4449 but I haven’t figured out voicemail yet. And still I beg you, try email first.

By the way, that’s a picture of Carl Knapp late in life there behind the phone. Just to remember.

In yet another sign that I may have been here too long, after I wrote yesterday about the freshmen arriving in the rain I had this thought: “Hmmm, didn’t it rain when they were first moving into the new colleges?”

The answer is yes, yes it sure did. The switch to the college system did not take place in the fall, as you might expect. Instead we decided to do a sort of wild upset in the spring of 1957. (I think but am not certain that this was because of construction issues rather than perversity.) Over the course of a week at the end of that March everyone scattered out of their dorms into their newly assigned colleges. It didn’t rain the whole time, but it did rain quite a bit. And how would I know this? I’d know it at least in part from Vetta Masterson’s journal. Here’s her description of the move into the new Hanszen Master’s House, followed by an absolutely wonderful description of their first open house:

I didn’t have time to look this up. Sorry! If anyone really wants to know I can check tomorrow.

Bonus: The first masters, inside.

Left to right they are Cal Class, William Masterson, Street Fulton, Carl Wischmeyer, and Roy Talmage. (Talmage, incidentally, once told me almost offhandedly the single most surprising thing I’ve ever heard at Rice. Unfortunately, I don’t dare repeat it. Yet.)

Extra bonus: The first masters, outside.

Obviously they’ve moved around. I’ll leave it to you to sort them out. On another track altogether, I’m fascinated that both of these photographs are atrociously lighted, each in a different way.

The freshmen arrived this year on a rainy day, dampened but undaunted. Here’s a lovely piece by Rice’s videographer, Brandon Martin, that captures all the nervous excitement of the moment. I was especially touched to see Franz Brotzen-Smith, the grandson of Rice Mechanical Engineering professor Franz Brotzen, arrive at Brown College, where his grandparents had been Masters:

It’s hard for me to keep a dry eye sometimes.

And then I remember stuff like this and I have to laugh:

It’s another travel day for me today so this will be a quickie. Here’s an image of President Lovett standing in the Sallyport on the day of the 1930 commencement garden party. It’s a great one, and rare. I believe he’s smiling, which is not a thing that was frequently photographed:

And here’s another surprise–I’m taking the day off tomorrow. See y’all Monday.

Bonus: This post is coming to you directly from beautiful Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Nebraska!

But some of them are!

This was on the front page of the December 5, 1924 issue of the Thresher:

I read this with a great deal of interest. I’ve wondered for years what will be the most arcane and trivial fact about Rice history that I’ll be able to recite from memory and this short piece provides some great material.

Mostly, though, I was shocked to discover that Samuel McCann was a redhead. The only color photograph I’ve ever seen of him is this one, taken in 1951:

You can kind of see it.

Bonus: I was also interested to discover that a couple of the old lamp posts from yesterday’s bonus had wasp nests inside the bases.

It reminded me of a painful run-in I had with a bunch of bees that were living inside an old German High Hat pole right next to Lovett Hall. Sneaky little critters. Keep your eyes open out there!