Rice History Corner

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Here are brothers Charles and Robert Blair leaving home in Vernon, Texas, way up on the Oklahoma border, for the long trip to the Rice Institute. It was in the fall of 1930. :

Their final destination, Room 407, East Hall Tower, where they lived together during each school year from 1929 to 1931:

When I first saw these pictures I scanned them just because I was so taken with the notion of the two of them rooming together. Then I began to wonder about who they were and what became of them. It took some digging (Thanks Lee and Rebecca!) but I found what I was looking for. Bob graduated from Rice in 1933 and went on to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, where he got his degree in 1937. He spent most of his long career as a doctor practicing in Houston. Charles stayed at Rice for  his B.A. (’31) and M.A. (’32), both in Chemistry, and went to Cal Tech to earn his doctorate. He was honored with the ARA’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 1992 for his pathbreaking career in applying surface chemistry to solve a variety of problems in petroleum production and refining. (He had over a hundred patents.) I was touched to discover that it was a third brother, William (’36), who nominated Charles for the award.

In yesterday’s comments someone mentioned the footbridge over Harris Gully (or the “Blue Danube” as the map has it). Here it is in a small, blurry image from 1926:

Coincidentally, this afternoon I came upon this ad in a 1950 issue of the Sallyport. It’s a lousy reproduction–the Sallyport was printed on newsprint at this time, so if you zoom in on it too closely it melts into a blur of dots–but it’s ironically the best view of the thing I’ve ever seen, as well as the only image I’ve ever found of the the gully being enclosed.

It also helps date this picture with a bit more certainty:

1950

Wow! Check this beauty out:

It appeared in the first issue of the Thresher of the 1944 school year. To my great delight it is full of things I don’t know anything about.

Already, though, I’ve found one thing–a 1946 ad for the bowling alley across Main from the Fieldhouse. I haven’t been able to locate any information about this but I wonder if it later became the Palace Lanes on Bellaire.

Bonus: Just for fun here’s the very handsome masthead of the Thresher in 1944. Zoom in and look at those owls.

You know what always makes a great picture? Pole vaulters, that’s what.

This first shot is very early, probably 1916. I think it’s one of the five or six best images that I’ve come across in Rice’s collections. Do yourself a favor and click on it–it has a rare sense of immediacy, made all the more remarkable by the fact that it’s a scan off a glass plate. (This is from the batch that Rice photographer Tommy Lavergne brought in a couple of years ago.) It’s hard for me to look at it and not anticipate what must have been a difficult reconnection with the earth.

This next one is also undated, but from the look of the background I’d guess it was taken in the early 1930s:

And finally this one from the very late ’60s or early ’70s–even when they aren’t in the air they still manage to look interesting. Note that they finally have something softer to land on and that there had been some advances in pole technology:

Bonus: A surprisingly alert faculty member pointed out these benches over by Huff House this afternoon. I’d never noticed them before and have no idea how long they’ve been there.

This newspaper clipping came out of an alumni scrapbook. I might be mistaken, but I believe that’s the only picture I’ve ever seen of Dr. Lovett goofing around. Dr. Houston seems to be having a jolly time as well.

Folly Update:  Will Cannady has come up with an explanation of this picture from a couple of weeks ago.

The photo was taken in 1971 while Jonathan King and I were visiting the library.  We were writing an article about the LBJ Library just after it was completed as part of a series of articles we called “Photo Critiques”.  Our article did not say many nice things about this building’s design.  These were published by the English magazine Architectural Design, widely known as AD.  Jonathan King was the photographer.

Thank you, Professor Cannady!

You know, I’ve been doing this for several years now and I’m still frequently surprised at what you people like. Yesterday’s interior shot of the power plant drew numerous demands for more, so what the heck, here you go. I don’t know a whole lot about this, but I do have some very good photographs of the various machinery.

Part of the reason I had trouble finding an image with the trolley for the bridge crane is that (starting with construction, as in the picture above) photographers tended to be fascinated with one particular view:

There are a lot of pictures of this. It’s the Lovett Hall of power plant photographs, the thing you pose in front of:

But there are a few more:

I have, as I noted, little to no idea what any of this is or how it works, but I do know enough to be really interested in the various light fixtures you can see when you zoom in on these. As always, your thoughts are welcome.

Bonus: Sunset over the stadium parking lot, yesterday evening. Courtesy of loyal reader John Wolda.

A while back I got an interesting email from a reader who has in his possession a piece of original equipment from the Rice power plant, an old trolley for a bridge crane:

I purchased it from university facilities and engineering in 1992, when I was working for Brown & Root.They had us remove it from the Central Plant. It was the original trolley for the plant’s bridge crane and dated back to when the building was first constructed. I remember that I contacted you to see if Rice had any records on who the manufacturer was, but there were none at the time. I have at last found that information and thought you might be interested. The trolley (and its bridge) were manufactured by the Whiting Crane Corporation and  sold to Rice in 1911. It is a unique one of a kind piece of equipment and was made exactly to specifications provided by whomever the architect/engineer was at Rice at that time.The crane was installed before Rice even started its first class. I thought it strange that this equipment was simply sold off in 1992 given the University’s interest in preserving history. I remember that we had to remove brickwork from the top of one of the Central Plants arched entrances to insert a chiller. A special company was called in to carefully document,remove and then put back the bricks exactly as they had been……with perfectly matching mortar.

The old business office papers, most of which date from the days of A.B. Cohn, are a treasure trove of oddball documents. There are quite a few things in there that don’t really directly relate to the Institute, but which sort of touch on it. I recently discovered this piece of advertising from 1931 for the newly opened Southgate subdivision. The Institute was of course always cognizant (and sometimes even involved) with the development of the areas near campus, but this brochure was particularly interesting to me because of the prominent use of campus photographs in the sales pitch. (The brochure is in pretty rough shape, as you can see–looks like water damage.)

Note also that one of the men listed as shareholders in the Southgate Corporation is long-serving Rice Civil Engineering professor L.B. Ryon, the first mayor of West University Place and donor and namesake of Ryon Lab.

Bonus: I had a meeting at U of H today, while it was still warm and sunny.

Not long ago I was looking around in a place I’d never looked before and I was again rewarded with something charming–a worn, coffee stained program from the 1962 Homecoming and two photos that seem to have been taken at that event. It was the pictures that first caught my eye. They are only labeled with the name of the photographer: Ike Sanders, ’17, but they are easy to identify. The first one, taken inside Cohen House, is of Professor Tsanoff:

The second is mathematician Hubert Bray, ’18, Rice’s first Ph.D. recipient.  Note the large badge on his lapel. I’m fairly certain that it was the one designed by Harry Bulbrook to be worn by members of Rice’s “Frontier Five” classes on the occasion of the 50th anniversary.

I don’t know if anyone else will enjoy the event program as much as I do, but here it is anyway: 

I just love to read their names.