Rice History Corner

I’m on the road today and nothing went wrong! In celebration, I give you this happy moment:

Bonus: Lots of new equipment has appeared recently.

And the sad but photogenic castoffs:

For reasons too strange to go into here my attention was recently drawn to the history of fencing at Rice. Over time its popularity here has waxed and waned but it seems that once it arrived in 1924 there was a nearly constant presence either as a team or a club sport. Here’s the November 1924 article that heralded the organization of the first club:

With a quick peek into the photo files  I discovered that almost all the images were from the 1950s, apparently a heyday of fencing here:

Look at this beauty, which looks to have been taken during a gym class in 1958:

Here’s the 1956 team with Coach Harold Van Buskirk:

I was quite taken with Van Buskirk, who has a distinct look about him, and suspected he was behind the Rice team’s successes during this era. Indeed, it turns out that he was a fine coach and before that a fine competitor himself. A 1915 architecture graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Van Buskirk was a member of the United States fencing team at the 1924, 1928, and 1932 Olympics as well as the US National Champion with épée in 1927. (He was also, rather unexpectedly, head of the US Navy camouflage section during World War I.) He coached at Rice for over twenty years.

If you’d like to see a clip of him fencing at the height of his powers (and really, why wouldn’t you?), here you go:

Somewhere in Lovett College, 1995. Which was 21 years ago if you’ve lost count.

Bonus: I never thought I’d say this but I just went over and bought a bunch of football season tickets.

I got hooked by my experience guest coaching at the spring game:

Have you ever seen Coach Thurmond so happy??

A loyal reader who lived in Brown College a couple of years ago very kindly sent the Woodson some interesting documents. We’re extremely grateful but will be occupied for quite some time trying to unravel all the intricacies of this tracking system:

Bonus: I’m not sure why I so enjoy seeing things that are supposed to be vertical go horizontal.

A: Not as smart as I’d like to think..

The other day I came across a folder in Dr. Lovett’s papers that I’d seen before but never roused myself to look in. For whatever reason this time the title struck me as funny: “Announcements — Official.” Official announcements, you say?! I must know what these are!

They turned out to be quite revealing, notices that got posted on the bulletin board in the Sallyport, where they would be sure to be seen and seen quickly. The date range was wide, from the teens all the way through the 1940s. Many of them had holes in their corners where they’d been pinned.

Most of them, even those with new information, were easy to understand but I was befuddled by this one:

Wh–? This makes no sense. Everybody knows that Texas Independence Day is March 2 and San Jacinto Day is April 21st! In my wonderment I showed it to a much brighter colleague who just looked at it and said: “Easter Monday.” And indeed, Easter Sunday in 1934 was on April 1st.

On the plus side, I have room for improvement.

Bonus:

After he finished photographing the Engineering Quad from all sides, Paul walked over to the back of Fondren and continued taking pictures, again moving in circles and this time climbing up on top of the RMC to get the whole thing. When he finished that he did the same thing over in front of Hamman Hall. (I heard from him yesterday, by the way, and he claims he can’t remember doing any of this but does think he might find the negatives. This would be a massive improvement over the blurry contact sheets so send good thoughts in his direction.)

These pictures of the back of the library are remarkable–I’ve never seen anything like them before and was quite excited when I realized what they were. Now that the library  has a back door (!) and the Brochstein Pavilion provides a busy gathering place right next to it, it’s easy to forget what a wasteland it used to be back there.

From this vantage point it’s easy to see how the ’60s addition to Fondren acted as a dam and turned this space into a backwater:

Not much the other way either:

So here’s my theory. Reading through the correspondence files in the Sculpture Collection it became clear that for a couple of years in the early 1980s many different possibilities for adding public art to campus were being discussed with the Brown family. This ultimately resulted in the installation of Michael Heizer’s 45° 90° 180° in the Engineering Quad but that was not at all a foregone conclusion at the beginning of the discussions. Other artists and other sites were carefully considered (and the whole thing was thoughtfully, even elegantly, managed by Art Professor Bill Camfield). Both the enormous lawns behind Fondren and in front of Hamman Hall were talked about as potential sites. Therefore, I conclude that that’s why Paul Hester took these pictures that wound up in the Sculpture Collection even though they have no sculpture in them.

Right??

Bonus:

I’ve recently had reason to be looking at files about the various pieces of sculpture that have inhabited campus over the years. A couple of weeks ago I was poking around in the box that holds the records for 45° 90° 180° in the Engineering Quad when I found several contact sheets. I got out my loupe for a closer look, expecting to see images of the slabs being installed, but oddly enough it wasn’t there at all:

Interesting.

I flipped the sheet over to check for a date (which wasn’t there, incidentally), and instead found a sticker that said “Photographs by Paul Hester.”( See here and here.) I laughed and started scanning to get a better look. It turns out that he walked all around the quad taking pictures of the whole thing. Now I have record of every angle on one winter day in the early 1980s! Here are a few:

Here’s where the Mechanical Engineering Building is today. I feel like I have pictures somewhere of some of these trees being moved:

And here we can catch a glimpse of the edge of that old Sigma Tau pyramid that cost me so much sleep back in the spring of 2013:

This is just glorious. Glorious!

But you know what? It gets better.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you my theory.

Bonus:

Yikes.

Bonus: I was amazed to discover that this sign is still up at Hack’s favorite squash court.

Avert your eyes from that terrifying owl over his right shoulder and look instead at the glorious multi-line rotary phone over his left. I can almost feel the solid feeling of pushing one of those buttons:

Bonus: This is by way of notifying everyone that I no longer have a Rice land line. It has been the bane of my existence for years and I’m glad it’s gone. Most of you already know this but if you want to get me, just send an email: kean@rice.edu. You could also try to come find me, I suppose, but frankly, good luck with that. I don’t sit still.

Dead.

I spent my whole day yesterday at the Houston Metropolitan Research Center in the downtown library. With the cheerful help of the staff I quickly found what I had come for, some materials in the West University Place Collection. Then, since it was pouring rain, I decided to stick around and see if I might find something else to keep me busy. I wound up immersed in the papers of Leopold Meyer, a prominent Houston businessman and philanthropist. Much to my surprise there was a thick file labeled “Rice University and Fondren Library.” Inside was something wonderful.

Mr. Meyer was a lover of rare books and had amassed a large collection of books, letters, and manuscripts. At some point he decided to give much of this collection away and the method he chose was unusual. He gave them to Fondren not as is common”in memory of” friends and relatives who had died but rather “as an expression of affection” for people still living. There are pages and pages of these, with volumes given in honor of George Brown and Norman Hackerman and dozens more:

The effect this had on those so honored was powerful and they responded with beautiful letters of thanks. Here’s a typical one, this from Harry Battlestein:

I nearly wept from the cumulative effect of all these letters and if I’d been in the Woodson instead of the public library I would have. The first thing I did when I got to work today was to see if I could locate any of these volumes. It was almost laughably easy–once you start looking, you find Mr. Meyer’s bookplate all over the rare books collection. Here’s the one he gave in honor of Bob Hope:

And here’s his lovely bookplate:

Bonus:

Extra Bonus: I was really drawn to that bookplate and as I examined it noticed the artist’s name–Furth. Hertha Furth was an Austrian painter and illustrator who lived much of her life in New York. I found her basic biography here. But for something really astonishing, check out this excerpt from a memoir called Ten Dollars in My Pocket: The American Education of a Holocaust Survivor by Elizabeth Welt Trahan.