Rice History Corner

These two pages come out of the expanded 1921 edition of the  athletic department’s “R Book.” I’m particularly struck by the rosy expectations for even better facilities in the near future, which turned out to be largely unwarranted. The Great Depression messed up a lot of plans on this campus.

I’m also interested in the way the word “equipment” is used here to describe what today we would call “facilities.” “Equipment” now makes one think of racks of basketballs or baseball bats or the like. I’ve noticed this before in the discussions in the General Announcements about the various laboratories on campus, which are also referred to as equipment. I wonder when this meaning shifted.

Bonus:

I just came across this striking image a couple of days ago. It’s undated but I think that’s  Burt McMurtry, ’56, ’57 at right:

This afternoon I stumbled upon some great images from the Chamber Orchestra’s trip to Germany and Austria in what looks like the fall of 1970. They seem to have played several concerts and also spent time sightseeing. The photograph that first caught my eye is this one of the group on a platform at the Berlin wall, looking over at the eastern side:

Here’s the view:

A picnic in Austria:

But it’s always good to be home:

I’m fairly certain that the photographer was Chem E professor Tom Leland, the fellow with the mustache just to the left of the happy young woman at center. I’m not completely sure why he was along for this trip, though.

Bonus: Sometimes you go to the Berlin wall, sometimes the Berlin wall comes to you.

Way back in the day the Rice athletics department used to produce a small annual booklet called the “R Book” which gave a brief rundown of each year’s sporting events. In 1921, in collaboration with the Student Association, they came out with an expanded edition that was meant to be used for recruiting purposes. It gives us a very nice look at my favorite thing—stuff that would otherwise slip through the cracks. Here’s what first caught my eye:

We might have one of those watch fobs in the vault.

Bonus: From a loyal reader.

but I know what I like.

This comes from a contact sheet labeled “Student Art Show, 1985”:

This clip from the summer of 1971 comes from the archive of ktru tapes that indefatigable Woodson staffer Norie Guthrie has been digitizing. Listen all the way to the end. If you can identify the people talking (or if you yourself are one of the people talking), please let us know.

Many thanks to Norie, who frequently and very gently helps me transcend my limitations.

It was an exhibit of works by the surrealist painter and sculptor, Max Ernst. The show, titled “Inside the Sight,” was conceived and developed by Dominique de Menil and opened at l’Orangerie in Paris in 1971. After making it’s way around France for a year the exhibit’s first American showing opened at The Rice Museum in early 1973. A national tour followed, including stops at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Guggenheim, but the only other campus to host it was Harvard.

Mrs. de Menil worked on hanging the exhibit over what looks like a period of a couple of weeks in late 1972. She was extraordinarily photogenic:

She also strongly urged that every Rice student visit the show. “To be on campus and not see the Ernst show,” she proclaimed, ” is like passing through Chartres and not looking at the cathedral.”

I hope you guys showed up.

Bonus:

I got several comments and emails about this nifty Neil Brennan shot of Hermann Hospital from a balcony on the Administration Building that I posted a couple of weeks ago:

Brennan actually took another picture of Hermann Hospital but I couldn’t post it until just now because I couldn’t figure out where he took it from. Have a look:

At first glance it seems obvious: this was taken from the Physics Building, somewhere towards the west side. But at second glance there’s something troubling here. If you look at the quad side of the building you’ll see that every single window is arched. There are none that have a horizontal edge like that at the top of this photo.  Furthermore, there exists no flat vertical edge like the one at the right side of this image anywhere on the building. It’s a puzzlement.

I looked at the outside of the building for a long time on several different occasions (I’m sure passing students take me for an imbecile) but could make no sense of it. Today I went inside and with the help of Erik Tanner from the Political Science office and Stan Dodds from Physics I found the answer. And the answer made me smile.

The photograph was taken from a lab, now labeled Room 218. The only way to account for what we see in it is if Brennan did exactly the kind of thing that we already know he liked to do: climb up on a stool, open the window, and lean out to get the shot. The horizontal edge at the top is the bottom rail of the open window and the vertical edge at the right is actually a curved column that looks straight from one angle.

Bonus: You can’t get the windows open anymore.

One of the things that happens after a couple of decades the same archive is that you notice very quickly when something doesn’t fit into the usual patterns. Here we have one such thing, the cover of the program for the 1964 Rondelet:

That is instantly recognizable as being both far too sophisticated and entirely too good for its purpose. The artwork for things like this typically can best be described as “adequate.” I didn’t at first see the artist’s signature inside the drawing but the inside of the program, under “Rondelet Committee,” credits “Mister Bill Condon.” Condon, who graduated from Rice in 1949, was a practicing architect but had a second life as a successful painter and printmaker:

As I looked more intently at the drawing I had a sense that I’d seen other work by the same artist before, so I went and asked a colleague about it. Indeed, back in the vault he turned up this small multi-media piece which Condon made for George and Alice Brown. It found its way to the Woodson via Ralph O’Connor:

Now, go back to the inside of the program and see if you can spot the other, even more startling anomaly.

I’m far too committed to order to be a big fan of Halloween. It seems messy and weird and disruptive to me and I’d rather avoid the whole thing if I can. Every once in a while, though, I come across a Halloween photo that is just charming. On that front, I don’t believe that last year’s shot of Olga Korbut at Brown College will ever be topped:

Nailed it!

I did find another nice one recently, however, from the mid ’80s– just a couple of high spirited lads enjoying the holiday:

Stay out of trouble, y’all.