Rice History Corner

Almost, but not quite, the same patch of ground in the Academic Quad. The first is in the fall of 1911, part of the original tunnel system:

And the second is much later. Can you guess what would have prompted the installation of a sprinkler system? I’m guessing it was to make sure things were green and pretty for the Economic Summit in scorching hot mid-July 1990. It did no favors for the Italian cypresses, though, which now have perpetually wet feet:

This one has the “T Lavergne” chicken scratch on the back.

Bonus: I’m up at Iowa State today for a meeting and we were treated to a short concert by part of the Iowa State University Cyclone Football “Varsity” Marching Band. They were very good. Apparently ISU’s Homecoming is this weekend. I like their chances against a wobbly University of Texas team.

Sharp-eyed readers might spot a really good looking historian in the audience.

I’ve been struggling to come up with dates for what look to be fairly early images of the Cohen House patio. I haven’t had any real success (yet) but in the course of these struggles I accidentally happened across something I’d never seen before: two photographs of the inside of the newly completed club. (They among the Bud Morehead slides that I’m still working my way through.)

Note here the painted designs on the lower half of the wall:

The furniture looks like it was very, very nice which is exactly what you would expect from the Cohens, who really spared no expense in building and outfitting the club:

Just for fun, here’s a surprising picture of the back that I can’t quite settle on a date for:

Bonus: A loyal reader sent in this lovely photo of the moon over the Turrell. I am, as always, grateful for the help.

The lads who were fellows and lecturers in the 1920s loved to take excursions. When I first ran across this page in a scrapbook from that era (the same one that blessed us with “The Great Overall Fad of 1920”) I was curious about why these fun loving guys would head off to visit such a muddy and godforsaken looking town. (By the way, I’ve written before about two of the four travelers, Norman Ricker and Henry O. Nicholas.)

The next page cleared it up for me. Blue Ridge wasn’t so much a town (although there was indeed a ragged little town in the vicinity) as it was an oil field, and a big one discovered by Gulf in 1919:

They also visited the Pierce Junction field, which was quite a bit closer to Rice, roughly where the Astrodome was later built. You could actually see it from campus if you got up on top of a building.  It was also a big find and it was brand new in 1921:

Bonus:

I’d never seen a photo taken straight on before. What an elegant structure.

Bonus: The big question on this blustery day was how far is the tip of the blade from the emergency phone pole. The answer was 5’1″. It must have been enough because when I came back a couple of hours later they were gone.

I was the only one who had enough hair to get blown around.

It’s a mess on campus today, between Families Weekend and preparations for the game with Army tomorrow. I skedaddled as soon as I could. But here, courtesy of loyal reader Nancy Burch, we have the prize-winning float from Homecoming 1958, a pointed mockery of the Army football team. The image is a bit blurry but I think there’s a laundry theme going on, with what I believe is an Army player being fed through a wringer. At least I think that’s a wringer, an appliance of which I have only the dimmest recollection:

This would be much better if we had won.

Neil Brennan took pictures that other people don’t. In particular, he liked to take pictures looking tight along the side of whatever building he happened to be in or on. Sometimes this resulted in images that do not exist anywhere else. Here’s one of those, from West Hall looking east:

This next one is similar to the standard commencement photo they used to take every year from the top of the arcade that connects the Administration Building to Physics, but Brennan must have been squished right up next to the building on one of the balconies:

It might not seem like much but in my little world, where I see the same pictures over and over again, anything different is good.

Bonus:

No, not the Alamo.

It’s a pretty interesting idea, though: Mexico against Texas for bragging rights in tennis in the 1930s:

What makes it especially interesting is the fact that the Tejano contingent included a couple of good Rice players, including a very familiar name, Jake Hess, the namesake of our previous tennis facility:

I have no idea who won.

Bonus:

Over the last few days of December 1961 someone with the initials T.W.G. made detailed drawings of all the parking lots at Rice, then put them together in a packet on New Year’s Day. I just found them this week. My mind is still reeling.

Everywhere on this map there’s a number, there are parking spaces:

It’s going to take me a while to process all this information but here are a couple of random things I noticed right off. First, senior faculty had reserved spaces! Right by the door! (Also, by the way, you can see that zigzag line in the chemistry lot that I talked about here a couple of years ago.)

Second, look at this beautiful lot right behind Fondren where the late 1960s addition and the Brochstein Pavilion are now. Reserved for Faculty and Library Staff! This is truly the stuff of dreams.

And finally, this one shows the front of Lovett Hall, where what used to be the main parking lot on campus is now grassed over, with only a few parking spaces left for the big dogs:

Bonus:

I’m sure you’ll recall that I got discombobulated the other day about this picture:

My friend Leonard Lane sorted it out–it’s the back side of Architecture with the addition going up. Then today I was looking through some slides that turned up in O. Jack Mitchell’s papers and I found two lovely shots that must have been taken shortly after it was completed. One was taken near mid-day and the other, spectacularly, at night. Both were taken by Paul Hester, ’71 :

It’s hard these days to see how great looking this really is. If it were up to me, I believe I’d cut down those pines.

Bonus: Rubber ducks.

I don’t know where this is, what they’re doing, or who those other guys are but I certainly do recognize Frank Ryan, ’58, ’65 in the middle, intently gazing down at some mind blowing obsolete technology:

Two questions:

What is that thing?

Did he go grey at an early age?