Rice History Corner

I love this picture.
I’d also like to have one of those mugs.

Bonus: We have the meeting minutes for the Rally Club going back to it’s inception. I’ve had some pretty good laughs reading them.

I’m still trying to narrow down the location of the set building for the 1947 Archi-arts ball that we saw in Tuesday’s post. My initial hunch was that it must have taken place in the Chemistry Building because that’s where Architecture was at the time. After further review, I think that call stands. I don’t have a whole lot to go on but there are a couple of clues and, honestly, there weren’t very many buildings then so I feel pretty good about my odds.

First, notice that we can see a little bit of a ceiling light fixture in this shot:

I do happen to have several pictures that show the interior of Chemistry right after it was completed and from what I can see, it seems to be the same kind of fixture that was used throughout the building:

Second, in this one–and I can’t believe I didn’t notice this immediately–there’s a near life sized plaster cast of a naked male torso at top left:

This sent me to the 1947-48 General Announcements to find out where the freehand drawing room was. The answer is in the “Library and Laboratories” section, which is a real wealth of information in general. Pages 62 and 63 describe the architecture facilities,  all in Chemistry: riceuniversityge194748hous (dragged) 1 and riceuniversityge194748hous (dragged)

Not an airtight case, perhaps, but I’m at peace with my decision to call this the freehand studio on the second floor of the Chemistry Building.

Bonus: Was anybody else creeped out by the vague, almost shadowy description of the Psychology lab in the general announcements above? It struck me as rather ominous. What could they have been doing in there?

Someone mentioned in the comments to the last Obsolete Technology post that Norman Hackerman wouldn’t have needed a word processor because he had a secretary to take care of his correspondence. That is absolutely true. He certainly did have an assistant and she was a doozy. Jackie Bourne retired just a few years ago after many years of service to Rice. She was always a pleasure to be around, smart and fun loving and helpful to me in many ways. Not the least of it was that she could (more or less) read Hackerman’s handwriting, which anyone who’s ever seen it will testify is very, very close to completely illegible. I wish I had a sample with me to show you. It’s astonishing and I don’t believe for one minute that he could read it himself.

Just last week I was grinding my way through some contact sheets and much to my delight I found a whole roll of images of the two of them together. Posing for the photographer, they look quite serious:

But by the last few shots things had reverted to normal:

There’s no identification but I’d guess very late ’70s or early ’80s.

Bonus: Here’s another pretty bookplate from Fondren.

We’ve got a beautiful scrapbook in the Woodson that came in Anderson Todd’s papers. Todd came to Rice in 1949 and taught architecture here until his retirement.(Here’s a great article about him by Mike Williams, complete with a video and a link to a really nifty on-line book that was produced to commemorate Todd’s 90th birthday in 2011. If nothing else, go look at this book–it’s wonderful.)

I just saw him at lunch in Cohen House a week or two ago. Anyway, he must have inherited the scrapbook because it’s full of pictures and programs from Archi-Arts Balls, some of which predate his arrival. The costumes are astonishing. Here’s just one, from 1947:

However, what I was most interested in was something else altogether. Somebody had to make the sets and it doesn’t look like it was all that easy:

There are only a couple of places this could conceivably be–somewhere in the Mech Lab or Physics are possible but the Architecture Department was in the Chemistry Building in 1947 and it could well be there. I didn’t think ahead and scan the program for the ball itself so again, I’m not sure where it was held but Autry House would be a decent guess.

Bonus:

There must have been a lot of fairly rapid technological changes in the 1970s and it looks like Norman got in on all of them. Over the years I’ve run across many images of him using equipment the likes of which I’ve never seen before. I’ve already posted this one:

Here he is using some sort of dictating machine:

And last but not least, this is one of my favorites. What the heck is that thing?

I think this academic procession took place during the Semi-Centennial in 1962, probably for Pitzer’s inauguration. I freely confess that I’m not sure about this.

Here’s a second set of images from the box of campus construction negatives I ran across a few weeks ago. These show what was originally called “Math Sciences” going up beginning in the summer of 1967 and continuing through the fall. This first one was taken in May, looking towards the engineering buildings, and the rest go chronologically through September. (I have another set of pictures of the end of construction, complete with some interior shots, so you can look forward to that.)

I still scratch my head sometimes about why they decided to put this where they did. Why not (just to note one possibility) put it where the Mechanical Engineering Building is today and create a quad? It seems to have been dropped down almost randomly. Clearly the original campus plan had been abandoned at this point, but it doesn’t look like any coherent replacement had been settled on.

In any event, we’re about to lose more of that parking lot.

But what’s this? Benches!

Bonus: I suspect those benches made their way over to Valhalla also.

I mentioned a little while ago that we recently received a box of Rice related materials from the Masterson family. Included were quite a few newspaper clippings that mention Dr. Masterson (’35), many dating back to the ’40s and ’50s. I found this 1952 article among them and I was struck by its cheerful and optimistic tone. (Note the author, another famous Rice alum.) I can understand it, I guess, as microfilm allows us access to a lot of stuff we wouldn’t otherwise have available.

But I’ve read many thousands of pages of college newspapers on microfilm and I hated every miserable minute of it. It’s awkward, squinty work, so uncomfortable that I’m currently putting off two small projects that require me to use it. I’ll break down eventually but not today.

Here’s the picture of the band that I used on Friday:

Grungy pointed out in the comments that this band is much too large to have been Rice’s and was probably the A&M band politely acknowledging the day’s opponent. He also noted that the 1938 Rice-A&M game was played at Kyle Field.

Well, hmmm. I admit that his argument is pretty persuasive but that doesn’t look like Kyle Field to me. Luckily, I have a lot to work with on this. Here’s a picture of the Aggie band of the same vintage that I know  for sure was taken in College Station:

How do I know this? Because I sacrificed myself and went looking around at an Aggie chatboard. (Don’t do this, by the way. Trust me, you wouldn’t like it.) There I found these beautiful photos of Kyle Field in 1940 that were posted a couple of years ago by an A&M old timer.

Then I remembered that I had this wider angled shot of the even more impressive LSU band, which was clearly taken at about the same time from the stands at Rice Field. The trees are the same and Hermann Hospital, clearly visible in this second image, is also just barely visible in the first.

So my best guess is that the date on the first image is just wrong and the picture was probably taken in 1937 or 1939 when the game was played in Houston. Grungy’s certainly right about the size of the band in the first picture, though. A quick perusal of the 1939 Campanile (Thank you, Dara!) reveals that the Rice band only had about fifty members, although I’m sure they filled in with locals.

Bonus: 

I’m not suggesting that it’s folly, but I understand there’s going to be a football game against Texas A&M this weekend. This sort of thing has been going on for a very long time, although I think autograph scandals add a relatively new twist. Here’s a program from the first time we did this. Note that the game was played at West End Park, a bigger venue than Rice Field at the time.

There’s not much of interest inside, but I did enjoy this ad on the back cover.

Bonus: 1938. Look how well behaved the band was.