Rice History Corner

One day he got someone to take a picture of him and another Math fellow, likely his roommate. I like the looks of both of them.

Here he is again, this time accidentally caught in the shadows cast by the slanting winter light:

I saw that same light yesterday afternoon, almost exactly 74 years later:

One of my favorite things happened today. Someone couldn’t find something and asked me if I could figure out what became of it. I love, love, love this because it lets me go out and act like I’m starring in a cop show.

What I was tracking down was a missing piece of the sundial outside Cohen House. It seems that we’ve sent it off for restoration in Switzerland, from whence it came in 1965. There’s a very thick file on this sundial in the Woodson–here’s the letter from Mr. Cohen to President Pitzer explaining what he had in mind:

And here’s a picture of the dial at about the time it first arrived on campus. (I’m pretty sure the ceremony was held for Mr. Cohen’s 80th birthday.) It’s really quite a nice instrument and a great deal of care was taken to make it function properly. This photo actually solves a separate mystery. I always sort of wondered in the back of my mind why they would have installed it in such a shady spot. Of course, it wasn’t so shady fifty years ago.

I like this view. There’s no Sewall Hall yet.

What had gone missing was the tip and the tail of the arrow–all the was left was the shaft, which obviously increases the cost of the renovation. I expected to write a post tonight asking if anyone knew where these pieces were. But as I looked through the files, I realized that Mr. Cohen, in his usual fussy way, had insisted that two of these arrows be made. Further, he didn’t like the round piece in the middle of the arrow–the disk of the “hole in the disk” that he mentions at the end of his letter to Pitzer–and had them replaced with two plaques showing the Cohen House seal.

So what happened to the second arrow? This was almost too easy. I’ve been in the bowels of Cohen House enough times to know that there was a reasonable possibility that it was in there somewhere so I just went over to check. I was guessing it was up in the attic apartment. I was wrong, though. It was in the basement, behind the place where the good china is stashed.

So I took it over to Hannes inF&E. I guess it will be sent to Switzerland.

Bonus: Here’s the empty stand.

And I haven’t forgot that the original tip and tail are still missing. If you know where they are, let me know. No questions asked!

Today was the first day the Woodson was open after our Christmas break. It’s great to be back, but we’ve received an almost overwhelming amount of material in the last few weeks and it’s very, very crazy. Very crazy. Crazy enough that you’d notice the difference. I also have several talks coming up fast that I have to get ready for. So I’m even busier than usual, but in a good way. Lots of new stuff to come.

But for today, I’m going back again to the map from the 1937 Owl:

This time I’m thinking about “Lovett’s Lake”–complete with the Queen Mary–just in front of the Administration Building. It’s not hard to  figure out what this is all about. Here’s a very early photo of this general spot, which I included as part of my dramatic “Drainage Series” from last year. It was taken in 1913 after a not particularly hard rain:

You can see the basic problem, but this picture really only hints at the kind of epic puddle that this landscape could produce when coupled with a good rain. Here’s a photo taken in the 1920s that illustrates what I mean:

Now that’s a puddle worthy of our respect.

I’m not finished yet with the materials from the late 1930s. I was looking through the images taken by Maxwell O. Reade again (I recently discovered that the “O.” stands for Ossian) when I came upon something of particular interest to me:

I’m sure the two fellows on the ends have their own worthwhile stories, but it’s the one in the middle that I care about. That’s David Morris Potter, who became a great American historian, probably best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the run-up to the Civil War, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861. He stayed at Rice as an instructor for four years, living in the faculty tower the whole time from what I can tell. His salary hovered around $2,500 a year, just a bit higher than average. He left here for a long and distinguished career at Yale and then Stanford. Here is a memorial resolution written by his Stanford colleagues at his death in 1971. Its authors are themselves very distinguished scholars–Fehrenbacher in fact completed and edited The Impending Crisis, which Potter had nearly finished when he died.

I think he has quite a jaunty look in this photo, with the bow tie and the grin. I also managed to dig up an “interview” that the Thresher did with him shortly after he arrived on campus in 1938. It confirms that he had the ability to act a little goofy:

I assume the spinach reference is to this cartoon, which created a long-lived sensation when it was first published in the New Yorker in 1928:

Bonus: You might think that this would be the most interesting development in the Italian cypress department over break:

This has been dead for quite some time.

It’s not, though. Here’s something more unusual. For a long time this tree was listing over towards Anderson Hall. Then they came in, set it right and added some more straps to hold it up. Now it’s listing over towards Rayzor!

This was taken during a game in the original fieldhouse–we have very, very few of these pictures and I don’t have any good way to date it.

I feel uneasy just looking at this contraption. I guess the dunk hadn’t been invented yet.

Wowee–this is a really big hole:

Obviously, this is the beginning of construction of Sewall Hall. The building makes a lot more sense when you see this. Suddenly, I understand why you enter it on the third floor.

Here’s something else that suddenly adds up. There’s the constant sound of water being pumped from this spot on the courtyard side of Sewall:

I wonder why they built it this way.

Bonus: Here’s a photo from the dedication of the building. That’s Blanche Harding Sewall in the wheelchair: she gave most of the money for its construction and named it for her late husband, Cleveland Sewall. Interestingly, she attempted to give the money anonymously but later agreed to have the gift publicly acknowledged. (I once accidentally came across her transcript and I have to say that she was a seriously good student.)

That’s Mrs. Hackerman at the right helping unveil the dedicatory plaque. You can also see the back of Professor Tsanoff’s head in the audience. He would have taught Mrs. Sewall.

Here’s the plaque now, on the northwest corner of the building:

A little while ago someone asked in the comments about the lone pine tree that’s visible in many of the pictures of campus construction in the late 1950s. Is it possible that it’s still standing?

Here it is in a photo from Joseph Davies’s collection, taken, I believe, from a second floor terrace on the Chemistry Building in the mid 50s:

And here it is again in construction photos taken in late 1957 and 1958:

This is worth a click. There's some interesting stuff in there and in the background.

So after having this roll around in the back of my mind all vacation, I went over there to take a look. Sure enough, I think that’s it, nestled in the corner:

So the tree might be the same, but I do notice something different. In the 1958 picture the tall central part of the building is made of the same latticed brickwork that you still see on the other buildings in the science complex, but in the picture from last week it’s glassed in. Either they changed it at some point or I’ve gotten myself turned around again.

I received several objections–all of them citing the fleeting nature of life–to my decision in the last post to save one of the Christmas cards I found in Professor Lear’s papers for next year. The point is well taken. So, in honor of the Second Day of Christmas here we go: 

The real reason I held this one back is that I don’t really understand what it is yet. In the rush at the end of the semester I couldn’t find even a few moments to do any research about it. I should explain that I came across it only recently and that it’s the only example we’ve seen of a card sent by President Pitzer. I’m not sure what year it was sent or where the image came from. If anyone knows anything about it, I’d be delighted to hear from you.

The Woodson is closed this week and my little Ann is visiting from Nebraska, so I might be a bit erratic here but I plan to continue ransacking my laptop for whatever images I can find. You’d be surprised if you could see what odd things I’ve accumulated. Its a bit like your batty old aunt’s attic.

Bonus: I was at school last Friday and it was simply desolate. But I was stopped in my tracks by this sad plea from a simple plant. It’s a little ironic, it seems to me, as you rarely encounter a smoker outside the library these days. They used to be common, pacing back and forth at all hours. Today they’re almost gone, replaced by people on cell phones.

Last year I posted a Christmas card from President and Mrs. Lovett–the same card they sent every year. It was a simple but lovely embossed card:

When William Houston became president, he continued the tradition of sending cards and they too were quite simple. But you can really sense how delighted Houston and his wife were with their brand new home. In 1949 we see the back:

And in 1950, the front: 

We have a Christmas Card Collection in the Woodson, but I found these in the papers of the historian Floyd Lear. (I’m holding the best one back for next year.)

Merry Christmas everyone!

I got back to campus today and I must admit that I really enjoyed being back. I had badly missed my colleagues–and my scanner. I figured that I would be tired and would just put up a post tonight about Rice Christmas cards, but something much more exciting came up. (Don’t worry, you’ll get to see the Christmas cards tomorrow.)

Over in the Baker Commons, Phase One of the renovations has begun. The panels have been taken down and sent off for refinishing. But what’s really interesting is what’s under the panels. It looks like a riot under there! During the planning phases they had peeked under one of the panels to get a sense of how the building had been constructed, but that couldn’t really prepare anyone for the wildness of the room.

I suspect the middle piece was once an outside column that was incorporated into the addition.

There are all kinds of materials–several kinds of brick, clay panels, wood, concrete–and the remains of at least two systems for attaching the beautiful wood panels to the walls. The older system is the one on the darker wall. Those circles are wooden dowels embedded in the wall that had grommets on the ends. The newer system is visible on the lighter wall on the left. The dark stripes are also wood, strips with nails meant to hold the panels. I think.

I’m not even going to try to get into the addition yet. My head is still spinning.

Bonus: It’s pretty obvious that over time there’s been quite a bit of patching done in this room. Here’s a note from a carpenter who took a crack at it in the summer of 1964: