Rice History Corner

I’ve gotten my hands on some microfilm rolls that might yield up clues about this image but circumstances probably will keep me from looking at them until at least Thursday. I do, however, have a couple other thoughts about it. The first thing that occurred to me is that given what we know about Knute Rockne’s Texas travel schedule in March 1929 it might be a good idea to check to make sure that it was really taken at Rice. Let’s look again:

And here’s one to compare it to, taken at a track meet at Rice in 1929, obviously later in the year by the spectators’ clothing. (I think it’s worth noting that I found these pictures in the same envelope.)

You can quite clearly see the spot where the first photo was taken at the left side of the building–the same drain pipe, the same window and bushes all appear in both images. The tall arched doorway would be just to the right of the man in uniform.

Bonus: Here’s another thing. As I was looking through this set of glass plate negatives trying to figure it all out, I noticed something else interesting. I said in the original post that Dr. Lovett had given up his bowler hat by this time. I based that on pictures of him from the late ’20s wearing more modern head gear:

But sure enough, I ran across a photo dated 1930 where he’s still got the old-fashioned bowler:

I don’t have any idea who the other fellows are.

It’s extremely hard to imagine this, but it’s not impossible that it’s Lovett’s hat on that guy’s head.

I learned Friday of the death of Diana Hobby. I find myself at a loss. I can point you to her obituary, an outline of an extremely full and adventurous life. I can note that she was a distinguished Rice alumna, having earned her doctorate here in 1981, and that she stayed on here until 1991 as an associate editor of Studies in English Literature, a job she did with skill and verve. I can tell you that she was an early associate of Brown College and show you a picture of Diana and Bill at Brown that I found in an old scrapbook recently:

I’m struggling, though, with how to explain what I found her most powerful characteristic, her kindness. I have just a small story. Once upon a time I spent an exhilarating early fall morning behind Diana, watching her back as I worked to keep up, first on horseback and then immediately into what had to be the coldest swimming pool in North America. She never flagged and never flinched. She also never once let on that I was slowing her down, which I most assuredly was. Instead she made me her compatriot. We were conspirators in fun, both of us feeling pity for everyone who had slept in that morning and missed it all. It was one of  the loveliest gifts I’ve ever received.

Diana Hobby, RIP.

I’m taking a couple of days off. Not for cleaning, though, but for gin and tonics. I’ll be back Monday with some more thoughts on that crazy photo I posted last Friday.

I recently came upon this old issue of Town and Country in a non-Rice related manuscript collection that one of us had out for some reason. It’s got a pretty arresting cover:

I really didn’t expect to find any Rice angle in it but I did, in a fashion spread about the glamorous women of Houston:

Here’s the caption: 

And here’s one more, not taken on campus, but it shows future Rice trustee, boxing promoter and horsewoman, Josephine Abercrombie:

Who knows where she is?

Bonus: Speaking of future Rice trustees, I think Raymond Brochstein must have still been working on his architecture degree at Rice in 1954. 

The Thresher had the story all the way back in April, announced in an Extra Edition:

I would only note that although it was certainly the case that Dr. Lovett’s original intent was for Rice to be a university, that was pretty clearly not William Marsh Rice’s plan. This wasn’t a problem with regard to the name change but it did cause significant trouble during the charter change lawsuit a few years later.

Bonus: Many things were very different in 1960. Here is assistant to the president, Thad Marsh, scolding the Thresher editor for getting something wrong on the front page:

Through an endless appetite for dry, tedious detail.

About two and a half years ago we had a discussion in the comments to this post about what those two little structures near the end of the hedges might be:

They’re odd little things, with some kind of flooring, a pretty striped canvas on top and some festive garlands wound around the legs. I’ve since come across another picture that seems to have been taken on the same day that reveals there were two more of them at the Administration Building side of the quad:

I still wasn’t sure what they were for, though. Then last week I was going through a box of very early business records and as soon as my eyes fell on this page I understood: they’re refreshment stands. We can now rest easy.

Two things jump out at me. First, the agreement calls for the stands to be erected during the night before the big opening ceremony on October 12, so that dates these photos as the morning of that day. Second, the contract is post-dated. One suspects that there was something close to chaos during the final run-up to the event.

Bonus: It’s been very wet, which is actually kind of nice. It makes the campus look green and lush.

Occasionally I run across pictures that are just so odd I can’t come up with any narrative that explains what’s going on. I know where this weirdly mismatched group is: by the old field house. And I know the year: 1929. But I have no earthly idea what the story is.

And whose hat is that?

Update: C Kelly points out in the comments that I had it reversed. He’s right! Here it is the right way around:

It’s just as weird this way.

I’ve recently been going though some very old materials. In the Business Manager’s Papers, mostly generated by A.B. Cohn in Rice’s very earliest days, I unexpectedly came across a box full of warning signs. One of the pieces of property William Marsh Rice left to the Institute was a huge tract of timber land, roughly 50,000 acres mostly in Beauregard Parish, Louisiana, just north of Lake Charles. It was the timber on this property that paid for much of the early building on campus and protecting it was serious business:

This is printed on cloth.

I’m sure few of you will be surprised to learn that this is about to take a weird turn, so here we go.

For no really good reason I instantly recognized the name of the Institute’s agent, Frank Shutts. He was an engineer in Lake Charles and an important figure in the development of that city. Here’s a picture of him that I found in the Southwest Louisiana Historical Collection at McNeese State:

And here’s why I knew him–that’s his goofball son, Elmer, a member of Rice’s first class, on the left:

Elmer has been mentioned here before in the context of his risqué dorm room decorations. A bit surprisingly, he also went on to become an important figure in Lake Charles, applying his Rice engineering training to the task of building and running that city’s port facility.

If you follow this link you’ll find more than you ever wanted to know about Lake Charles, but I would point out that Section IV on the lumber industry after 1900 was written by Elmer Shutts himself and includes a very interesting section on Rice’s introduction of professional reforestation efforts to the area.

When I came in to work today, I discovered that we had received a packet of photographs in the mail. I’m not totally sure of their origin but they all seem to have been taken at the same time and they were printed in November 1965, the same year that Jackie McCauleybecame Rice’s first black co-ed. Although from today’s vantage the overwhelming impression they create is one of wide open spaces, whoever took them captured the campus already mid-way through a decade of tremendous change. Look closely.

Bonus: Art? Or plumbing?

The library has a new scanner that swiftly and easily manages oversized materials. This is a big, big deal for me. It’s a big deal for you too, even if you didn’t know it until now because it allows me to show you things I couldn’t before, such as this article about Jacqueline McCauley, the first black woman admitted to Rice:

She left Rice after a couple of years and the only other thing I know about her is that she had a radio program on KLOL in Houston in the ’70s. (The Houston Radio History blog where I found that is a lot of fun, by the way.)

I greatly admire her courage and I’m grateful to her for helping save us from ourselves.

Bonus: The image of her leaning against the entrance to the Sallyport on the second page reminded me of this one taken in September, 1926.

Extra Bonus: It might not be the World Cup, but it’s soccer mania every day for the summer campers on campus.