Rice History Corner

One of the things in George Wheeler’s scrapbook that I lacked the wit to scrutinize the first time around was some material about what seems to have been annual event I’d never noticed before, the Junior Promenade:

His dance card was in there too, the only one in the scrapbook. (Mr. Wheeler was a very serious student.)

Rule 127 of scrapbook analysis: always look inside the dance card. This was extremely unexpected:

Here she is:

Bonus: Call before you dig.

President Pitzer doesn’t look totally comfortable, does he? The students, though, seem quite at ease:

Pitzer really was brand new to campus, having arrived only at the beginning of the month. Within a couple weeks of this image being taken he attended his first board meeting as president. The final issue on the agenda that day was the approval of the Atomic Energy Commission research grant that he brought with him from Berkeley. Normally this would be handled by the Academic Affairs Committee, then chaired by Newton Rayzor, but Rayzor and board chair George Brown insisted it be addressed by the full board. The reason for this departure from normal procedures was the non-discrimination clauses in the contract, which forbade discrimination in admissions based on race. After discussion (the contents of which are not recorded) the board voted to approve acceptance of the grant. They also authorized their lawyers to begin working on how to accomplish the desegregation of the university. To Pitzer it must have seemed that things were off to a flying start. It would not, however, be quite so simple.

Bonus: For good or for ill the campus is showing renewed signs of life this week. I even saw several students walking around with face masks and backpacks. This, though, truly saddened me. I’ve gotten so much pleasure over the years from seeing the joy of the brides and grooms, the quiceañera celebrants, and the graduates of varied and sundry institutions of learning. I hope they can come back soon.

Update: The link to my earlier post about Blayney is here. The location of the photo with the castle is discussed in the comments.

Another thing I found in Mr. Wheeler’s scrapbook was this striking image of Rice’s first German professor, Lindsey Blayney, and his wife Gertrude:

The picture is labeled “Commencement 1917” and I’d guess it was taken in the calm after the ceremony. They would have been standing just north of the front edge of this photo below, which is why we can’t see the screen they mercifully used to put up to shield attendees from the summer sun:

It must have been taken, I think, just before he left for service in World War I, as his service dates are listed as 1917 to 1919. I wrote about him way back in 2011 after I discovered this photograph in his papers–it may well be the single best image I’ve come across in all these years:

Bonus: Here’s Blayney’s tribute to Rice, written on the occasion of the semi-centannial in 1962. It’s really something. It’s a pdf so click on it for the whole experience.

Extra Bonus: I went down in the parking garage under the Jones School and got my retiree parking sticker!

The other day I was looking at the scrapbook of George Wheeler ’19. I’ve written about him before (here and here way back in 2011), in connection with the early history of the biology department. It’s been years since I last needed these materials but as often happens, when I opened the scrapbook a second time it showed me things I wasn’t prepared to see the first go-round.

Take a look at this beauty, shot from a completely unexpected angle. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen another like it:

This is really quite an image. It wasn’t dated but I’d put it at 1918. That’s gate 3 at the right so we’re looking directly at the spot where Palmer Church is today. The little whitish-colored shack across Main Street at left is The Owl snack shop, the only place aside from the Sallyport for students to hang out. Here are some doing just that:

To the right and further back from The Owl you can see a small, low-slung rectangular structure. That was the Institute trolley stop. It’s pretty easy to see why those diagonal walkways made sense.

I was especially interested in the triangle of trees and shrubbery and started looking for other pictures that might show it but it turns out that this little corner of campus is hard to get a good look at. This 1920 aerial is one of the few images that capture even part of the area but you can’t see the vegetation at all:

This ground level shot, which I was interested in because of the scaffolding on the campanile, clearly shows the gap in the hedges but I can’t be sure if the shrubs off to the left are the same:

I’d nearly given up when I remembered this image from the scrapbook of Jack Henderson ’27:

I see that I’ve never talked about Henderson’s scrapbook and it’s a good one so I’ll try to get to that directly.

Bonus:

I was looking through some images I scanned quite a while ago but never used and this one jumped right out at me. First off, that’s George Brown in the background, between the two cars at left. It isn’t every day you see someone being saluted while GRB is off to the side. Second, do you see where this is? It’s the front of the gym, with absolutely nothing–nothing at all–across the road. That’s really empty:

Then I started to think about who these guys were. It turns out to be a visit in February, 1957 from Admiral Arleigh Burke (see here), who was then Chief of Naval Operations. I’m wondering if those doing the saluting might be members of the Rice NROTC. They certainly look young enough.

Here’s another shot, this one of Burke visiting in Lovett Hall with Mr. Brown and then-provost Carey Croneis (I’d guess that President Houston must have been out of town):

A quick check of the Thresher reveals the reasons for Burke’s visit. I’ll give you all of both pages just for a taste of life at Rice in the eventful spring of 1957:

Bonus: Speaking as someone who has pushed and pulled heavily laden carts all over campus I can say that this new ramp into Rayzor Hall will be a boon to anyone or anything on wheels.

I found this in one of Alex Dessler’s (see here) notebooks. He was among other things the founding chairman of the Space Science Department. Being a department chair is not as fun as it sounds but this is classic Dessler humor and the caption makes me smile every time I look at it:

Bonus: They’re really doing this tent thing.

I’d known for many years about the audiotape in Dr. Davies’s papers but when I opened that box again a couple weeks ago I realized that we now could easily digitize it. I’m deeply grateful to my colleague Norie Guthrie for taking the time to do this for me. I’ve written about him many times (here, here, and here just for example) with no expectation that I would ever hear him speak.

This is a lecture, or at least most of one, given on April 22nd, 1963, and recorded by a student in Biology 100. Oddly enough it’s labeled “Hamlet” and if you listen to the whole thing you can almost see why. Maybe the piece at the end that’s cut off had the answer.

It’s about a half hour long, although you can get a feel for it in just a few minutes. It’s all a bit unexpected–he had a remarkable accent and a speaking style that must have been outdated even then. But you can feel his spark, his curiosity, his pleasure in his topic, and you can sense why students loved him.

Bonus: Floor signage at the Circulation Desk. Of course there’s no one in the library yet but they’ll be back soon and I’ll be six feet away from them.

So what else is new?

These are what Woodson insiders refer to as the Info Files:

They’re where you look for basic information about people, places, and things related to Rice, all in alphabetical order (more or less). If I wanted to know about, say, a faculty member or the establishment of some center, or when someone came on to the board of trustees this would be the first place I would go. Most of what’s in there are things like newspaper clippings, brochures, programs from events, and biographical information but there’s also things that I would call “miscellaneous,” things that just don’t quite belong anywhere in particular.

This is to say that while I am rather intimately acquainted with these files they can still surprise. I was in the Woodson on Wednesday and I opened one of the bottom drawers,  looking for something I was pretty sure wasn’t there. (I used to say “they pay me to check anyway” but I guess now it’s just a habit.) Right in front were the lease agreements for the three offices Rice rented downtown before everything moved to campus, you know, the ones I just wrote about on Tuesday. Why on earth they were there instead of with the other early contracts I have no idea. When you have so much information to manage, and much of it peculiar, a little idiosyncrasy is unavoidable. Anyway, the leases aren’t terribly interesting but in one of the files I found a nice little sketch of the layout of the Rice business offices in the Esperson Building. I don’t know who drew this but it wasn’t William Ward Watkin. I especially like the WIDE DOORS:

Bonus: This is where I spent my vacation.

I’m back from vacation, tanned, rested, and fabulous. I was back in the Woodson today looking for a needle in the haystack of the early board records. I didn’t find what I was hoping to (not finished yet, though) but I did notice something that had escaped my attention on earlier jaunts through these documents. I even know why I missed it–the last time I looked at this material I hadn’t yet conceived an interest in the various location of Rice’s business offices. I last wrote about this very recently, only a few weeks ago, after I found the 1948 notice that our general offices had moved from the Esperson Building to campus for the first time, but I’ve discussed our earlier office situation in the Scanlan Building as well.

It turns out I missed a lot and hadn’t thought very hard about what I did know. So I’ll try again. When the Rice Institute was chartered it didn’t have much of a physical presence for a long time. There was a six acre property downtown with a caretaker’s building on it but no office. The board met in the offices of the South Texas National Bank to handle what little Institute business there was. It was only after William Marsh Rice’s death and the end of the litigation that followed that they needed a headquarters for the Institute. Here’s the 1907 minute that records it:

We have the Heitmann Company records in the Woodson, by the way.

This is the Houston Land and Trust Building and its surrounding buildings in 1913. This intersection, Main and Franklin, was the center of the city’s banking and legal community with several big banks within a stone’s throw of each other, including the Commercial Bank right across the street , where Baker, Botts, Parker and Garwood then had their offices. A good address, in other words, and convenient for Captain Baker:

The next surprise was that they moved offices not even two years later–across the street to the Commercial Bank Building, and a better deal too:

I have some thoughts about that vault. Later, though.

My final surprise of the day was the discovery that the office in the Scanlan Building was just for Dr. Lovett and his assistant, not for general university business.

That’s enough mistakes for right now. I’ll have better luck tomorrow, I’m sure.

Bonus: Physical distancing? Not a problem.

Before I leave for vacation I need to tell you all how astonished I was by the reaction to my retirement. Honestly, I had no idea. The comments, emails, and facebook comments were deeply moving and I’m so very grateful for those expressions of appreciation for my work and of good wishes for the future. I’ll never be able to live up to them!

Also–don’t laugh–I’m already a little bored. So here’s a classic piece of obsolete technology to keep our spirits up until I get back. The first time I saw this I was so enchanted by the bedspread (and those tiles! certainly asbestos) that I failed to notice the slide rules:

But there’s more–zoom in and take a look at that old-time clock. It looks like you have to wind it up. And is it sitting on top of a transistor radio? There’s no date on this–I called it circa 1950 but it could well be somewhat later than that, although probably not earlier. I don’t know much about the history of radios but this kind of small radio (if that’s what it is) doesn’t start showing up in pictures until the 1950s.

Bonus: