Rice History Corner

When Tommy sent that beautiful shot of Brochstein Pavilion the other day he also included this lovely image of the campus taken from just above the main entrance:

It made me remember this drawing, which I found about a month or so ago. It’s a 1941 Cram and Ferguson sketch of a proposed location for the already anticipated new library group. They wanted to put it where George R. Brown is today. Although I think that in recent years we’ve found a way to make the best of it, I wish we would have done it their way.

Bonus: Last week I saw this over by Sewall, where they’re working on the roof.

I laughed, reminded of this:

I still miss Johnny.

We’ve gotten quite a bit of new material in the archives this summer and one of the collections kind of unexpectedly contains some great photographs. I don’t typically find a lot of glamor in Rice records but here’s a real doozy:

Wow–these folks look sharp. It’s got the feel of a big night. It’s not dated and it identifies (left to right) President Pitzer, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Pitzer and George R. Brown. Which, of course, I already knew. What it doesn’t tell me is who the couple further up the staircase might be–anybody have an idea? Also, where is this? I don’t think it’s the president’s house because the curving staircase there goes the other way, doesn’t it? Or does it?

Bonus: Campus Photographer Tommy Lavergne sent me this stunning image today. I can’t wait to see what else he shot from up there.

Did you think we were kidding about those overdue books??

Astute commenter effegee noted this about yesterday’s aerial photo: The period of the earlier picture must have been an extraordinary one with so much changing all at once. The 1998-2002 building boom was challenging but I think the level of stress it created was probably small compared to the late 50′s.

I think this is absolutely true. The scope of the change was simply immense and it took place in the context of a campus that had seen almost no significant physical change from the mid-1920s until the end of the 1940s. Just by happenstance yesterday afternoon I was going through some old scrapbooks full of newspaper clippings–I didn’t find what I was hoping for, by the way–and I ran across this article about all the activity on campus. Note the date: July 14, 1957, almost exactly 56 years ago. Also note that the construction of the Biology Building is much farther along than in yesterday’s aerial. Sorry about the bad scan job; I was in a huge hurry.

See those dark spots? That’s glue. Glue is bad.

Bonus: I think this must be science.

It’s been surprisingly busy for me lately. Various offices and departments are taking advantage of the July lull to clean things out or clean things up. Here’s how it goes: someone makes the decision to change some of the carpeting in Lovett Hall, which sets off a chain reaction of people moving to get out of the way, which causes other offices to rearrange things and it all ends (from my perspective, of course) with a box of assorted oddities sitting on my desk.

That’s how I got this aerial photo, which I’d not seen before:

Interesting, no? That’s from pretty high, right straight down on top of campus. There’s a lot to pick at here–I’m especially interested in that small semi-circle right where the new Wellness Center is today. I’ve noticed in other pictures that there’s often smoke drifting up from that spot and I wonder if it was some sort of . . . . well, dump, I guess.

It is, of course, undated. I’m fairly confident, though, that it must be early in 1957. You can see that the construction of the two new lab buildings has started and that the Geology Building is much farther along than Biology. They both opened in 1958. Here’s a picture taken by Professor Joseph Davies sometime in 1957:

There’s no sign yet in the aerial shot of groundbreaking on the RMC, which took place a bit later, and the cedar elms along the drive that today separates Rayzor and Sewall halls are in full leaf so it can’t be winter. Jones and Brown look to be nearly complete but not yet landscaped–move-in was in March, 1957. What else am I missing?

Bonus: Speaking of the RMC, here’s a picture I took from the top of the tower the last time I was up there.

I ran across these in the Campus Photographer collection. I think they must be from 1992. That looks like Athletic Director Bobby May with the new hire, Wayne Graham:

Interestingly, the media was out in full force for this event. This is just one of several different camera crews that show up on this contact sheet. I’m not sure but I think the woman with the microphone might be Lisa Malosky, who would have been at KPRC at this time.

He certainly had his work cut out for him, but it’s worked out pretty well so far.

Bonus: Fresh paint inside the RMC phone booths. You can’t be shy around here with your warning signs.

Matriculation, 1993.

I’m pretty sure he’s from out of state.

Bonus: Mr. Rice History Corner, either peeking at the progress of the new Continuing Studies building or waiting to be frisked.

Also, many thanks to all who commented the other day. It was very helpful!

Yesterday I was digging around in the files that came over a couple years ago from the campus photographers. I didn’t find what I was looking for but I did come across some other great material, including an entire folder full of slides that don’t seem to be all that old, but reveal a campus I don’t know well at all. It’s neither new enough to be part of my own experience nor old enough to have been something I’ve studied intently. All the photos seem to have been taken at about the same time, but they aren’t labeled except for one singularly unhelpful word: “duplicates.”

This is completely new to me. I simply do not know where this is:

Neither do I know how long the library looked like this inside:

Or where the post office was:

I do think that the idea of a Rice Museum is a really good one, although I have no idea what might have been in here:

Anybody have a plausible date? I’m guessing, based on next to nothing, mid to late ’70s.

I normally don’t bother posting images from yearbooks because they’re such low quality, which is kind of a shame. They’re often indescribably bizarre, particularly some of the ones from the early years, which come from a world that is so long lost to us. I’m making an exception for these two, which I found yesterday while looking for pictures of Helen Redfield. Because what the heck.

This first one grabbed my attention because I’d never seen a closer look at the original Chemistry annex. Even after I scanned it and blew it up I didn’t notice what was off to the right until about the fourth time I looked at it.

Then there’s this. I don’t even know what to say, except that it strikes me as evoking this era especially well. Don’t overlook the hats, which were the “of the moment” men’s fashion in 1920.

Also, I’m working on a post about Rice Field and aviation here in the early 1920s. It might take a while, though. I have to slog through microfilm.

Bonus: Roof repair on Sewall Hall.

I’ve posted quite a bit about the early history of Rice’s biology department and consequently thought that it would yield no more surprises. I was, as is often the case, mistaken. My new surprise began with this:

It’s a very old picture–printed from a glass plate negative–of Rice biologists Julian Huxley, Hermann Muller and Edgar Altenburg. It’s labeled on the back, “Biology faculty, Woods Hole, Summer 1917.” It’s a great picture but I was immediately skeptical about the date. 1917 is surely too late for these three to be there, as Huxley would have already returned to England. So I began trying to figure out when this could have been taken. I think it must have been the summer of 1916, but frankly I lost interest when I put “Rice Institute” and “Woods Hole” into my search engine and almost immediately found this picture. (Go look at it! It’s amazing.) I can safely say that this was about the last thing I expected to see.

Here is Helen Redfield as a Rice junior:

She was really smart–she worked as an assistant in Rice’s math department as a student but became deeply interested in the modern currents of genetics through her teachers in the biology department, Muller and Altenburg. After graduation she went off to Berkeley, where she earned her Ph.D. in zoology, then taught at Stanford. In 1926 she became a research fellow at Columbia, working in Thomas Hunt Morgan’s famous “Fly Room,” the cradle of drosophila work in genetics, where both Muller and Altenburg had also worked. (Former Rice biology professor David Queller gave a great Scientia talk during the centennial year about Julian Huxley and Hermann Muller, which includes a lot of discussion about the Fly Room. It’s available here.)

Redfield married another researcher in Morgan’s lab, Jack Schultz, and they had two children. She worked sporadically after that, including stints at NYU and Cal Tech. Schultz wound up in the National Academy of Science. Here’s a link to his memorial biography, which mentions Helen’s contributions also.

“Helen Redfield”. Embryo Project Encyclopedia (1921). ISSN: 1940-5030

Bonus: This is the picture she chose to go along with her formal senior yearbook picture.