Rice History Corner

After an alert reader asked a good question about John Heisman (which I still don’t know the answer to, by the way), I began to get curious about the entire Heisman episode at Rice. As with almost everything in the archives, there turns out to be far more to this than first meets the eye. I’ve found a stack of telegrams to President Lovett from William Ward Watkin, the Rice professor of architecture who also chaired the powerful Committee on Outdoor Sports, sent as Watkin traveled in the east looking for a new coach. I haven’t had time to sort all this out yet, but I did get a chance to look at the Thresher’s coverage of Heisman’s arrival at Rice.

The students were really pretty excited. The Thresher put out a special Extra Edition, printed on red paper. I think “giddy” would be a fair description of their response. If you click and zoom in on the small box at the bottom right of the page, there is a charming call for football recruits. Heisman can’t do it on his own, they declare. He will need “real honest-to-God he-men” who are willing to work hard and are “NOT ON PROBATION.” By the time Heisman actually made it to Houston, the members of the R Association were just as excited. He spoke to them the day of his arrival and the account of his remarks was glowing. Expectations were sky high.

A few weeks later, another story appeared in the Thresher, so small I almost missed it. The headline here is misleading. The story isn’t really about how lucky Rice was to have Heisman,  although that is mentioned. Rather, it’s about how Heisman blew out of his last coaching job (at Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania) with no warning, leaving that school reeling.

Now this is interesting. I just ordered a ridiculously expensive book about the history of football at Washington and Jefferson to see if I can find out what this was all about. If nothing else, I’ll learn something about the extremely impressive athletic accomplishments of this tiny school near Pittsburgh, which managed to be a national football powerhouse for many years with an enrollment of about 500.

In my line of work, there are two kinds of people: the ones who can answer my questions, and the ones who won’t be telling us anything any more. Over time I have become deeply attached to many of the people whose traces I stumble across in our archives, even though I will never meet them. There’s a long list of people I wish I could have talked with, people who could have explained things that will instead always remain slightly mysterious no matter how much research I do. Some of these people are the obvious suspects–George Brown, Ken Pitzer, Harry Wiess–but others are less well known.

At the top my my list is Zevi Salsburg. Salsburg earned his Ph.D in 1953 at Yale, where he was a member of the influential John Kirkwood group in statistical mechanics. He came to Rice in 1954 as a member of the chemistry department, later holding an appointment in mathematical science as well. He was widely regarded at the time as one of the most brilliant men on campus–he published extensively in chemical physics, held fellowships from NSF, the National Research Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and consulted for both Los Alamos and the Lawrence Radiation Lab at Livermore. Salsburg was also a key contributor, as a fund-raiser and designer, of the R1 computer that was built by Rice faculty in Abercrombie lab. It was Salsburg’s need for a machine that could simulate fluid flow that led to the project in the first place.

But there was more to Salsburg than his intellectual work. He was a committed citizen of the university who served as an associate at Will Rice and as a member of the faculty advisory committee for the presidential search in 1968-69. He also seems to have been a gentle fellow and a man of compassion for others. Quietly and diligently, on his own, he raised scholarship money for poor and minority students and then went out on the road to find students who could benefit from those scholarships. He supported many of those same students once they were on campus, tutoring them in math and science.

Zevi Salsburg died unexpectedly in 1970. It was summer, and he was visiting his parents in California. He was 41 years old.

The photograph above was taken in 1963. It shows Salsburg, third from the right, along with John Iliffe, Martin Graham, and John Kilpatrick in front of the R1 computer. We have several of the computer panels in the Woodson Research Center, as well as one of the platters from the hard disk. It’s about three feet across and weighs twenty pounds. An excellent short history of the R1 can be found here.

This isn’t part of Rice history yet, but I’m confident that it will be soon. I spend a fair amount of time in Omaha and I’ve been watching TD Ameritrade Park go up during the last year. It looks great. I can’t wait for the first game.

Sometimes there isn’t much you can say, except that times change. I’ve recently been doing some research into the history of parietal rules at Rice–that is, dormitory regulations and controls over the students’ social life in general. Rice did a pretty thorough job of this for quite a long time. But some things that were perfectly fine back in the day seem a bit shocking when you see them now. This would be one of those things.

The folks at Reynolds Tobacco were so pleased with this letter that they went ahead and sent cigarettes to all the Rice trustees too.

One of the more interesting things that has surfaced in those old boxes called “Sundry Contracts” is the correspondence surrounding John Heisman’s resignation as Rice’s athletic director and football coach in December, 1927. Heisman came to the Rice Institute amid very high hopes in 1924. He had a five-year contract, a salary of $9,000 (considerably higher than any faculty member), and an agreement that he would only be in residence in Houston during spring training and the football season. Heisman, one of the greatest innovators in the history of football, was utterly unable to improve the school’s football fortunes. Under his direction the Owls had three mediocre years: 4-4 in 1924, and 4-4-1 in both 1925 and 1926. In Heisman’s fourth season (1927) they were a disastrous 2-6-1.

At the end of that 1927 season, Rice fans were clamoring for a change. Captain Baker laid out the situation to the rest of the trustees in a letter dated December 1, noting that “the sentiment of the student body and friends of the Institute who take an interest in athletics is practically unanimous that Heisman should go.” He proposed buying out the remaining time on Heisman’s contract and appointing assistant coach Claude Rothgeb to the job. This was accomplished by the next day. Heisman never coached again.

The next year Rothgeb went 2-7. (This was his last head coaching job too.) He was succeeded in 1929 by Jack Meagher, who did no better, leading the Owls to another 2-7 record. Meagher lasted in the job until 1933, leaving Rice with a mediocre 26 wins and 26 losses. Things took a turn for the better with the hiring of Jimmy Kitts in 1934, and this success was famously continued by Jess Neely for over two decades, from 1940 to 1966.

Here are some aerial shots of the Rice campus that I ran across recently. These were both taken during roughly the same era, but it’s hard to say precisely when. Notice that the buildings on campus are the same in both–there were no new buildings completed between 1927 and the end of World War II. This makes dating pictures kind of tricky and sometimes even impossible.

This first one was taken from a more easterly direction and gives a strong sense of just how much room the Institute had to grow. (Note the awesome convenient parking in what is today Founder’s Court and the area in front of the Mech Lab where Duncan Hall sits now. And think for a minute about how much of this open space is now taken up with parking lots.) The tree line off towards the west follows Harris Gully as it cuts across the campus, then meets the curve of Sunset. There are a couple of things to look at when trying to figure out a date. The Chemistry Building, completed in 1925, is there, as is Cohen House, which opened in November, 1927. But if you zoom in on the picture the statue of William Marsh Rice is also clearly visible. This was dedicated in 1930 and it’s the most recent thing I can identify in this photo.

This second picture was taken from the south. When you zoom in Willie is there, so it couldn’t have been taken earlier than 1930. The buildings in the foreground aren’t really any help in dating this: the one on the left is Hermann Hospital, which opened its doors in 1925, and the one on the right is Autry House, which was completed in 1921.

If you click on the picture to get a closer look, though, it’s immediately apparent that there are a lot more trees and that the ones that have always been there are a lot bigger than in the first photo. There are also a lot more buildings in the neighborhood north of campus. I also see something that bears further investigation: a new road has appeared west of the dormitories (I think that road is called alumni drive, but I’m not sure. No one really knows the names of the roads on campus except the people who work in FE&P.) Unfortunately, I have no idea when that road was built and it isn’t at all obvious where to find that information. The most likely scenario is that one day I will be looking for something else and stumble across this information. And of course, if anyone already knows this, please let me know too!

One thing that happens when you inhabit the same archive for a long time is that everything eventually starts to remind you of something else. For example, I have another story about that road and its name. If I can find the outraged memo, I’ll post it.

Bottom line: If I had to guess, I would place the first photo closer to 1930 and the second closer to 1940.

The “Financial Records” boxes that we found in the old William Marsh Rice land leases collection continue to bring forth surprises. Many people know that the site of the Institute was originally to have been downtown on about 6 and a half acres on Louisiana Street between Bell and Pease.

This would have been plenty of space for the manual training school that Mr. Rice was contemplating, and even before his death some minor work was undertaken by the Board on that property: a small building was erected to house the Institute’s business office, trees were planted, and a fence built around the lot. Today I found a rough plan for that first building and an invoice for its construction in 1898. It’s pretty simple–a foursquare cottage on a pier and beam foundation with a small porch. I also found the bill for connection to the city water system. They needed to water the new trees.

Franz Brotzen came to Rice in 1954 as the Institute’s only materials scientist. He taught through the spring semester of 2009, and died this last May at 94, leaving an office full of active research materials. He was a great man, curious, passionate, and decent. He was thoroughly devoted to the university and he had many good and great days at Rice. This picture of him was taken on one of the most pivotal days in the university’s history.

On Februrary 21, 1969, the Rice faculty met in the Chemistry lecture hall, then the largest venue on campus, and heard Vice-Chairman of the Board Herbert Allen announce that William Masterson, a former member of the Rice history department, had been selected as the university’s president. This announcement was met with dismay. Jean Claude deBremaecker of the geology faculty asked Brotzen, who had chaired a faculty committee to advise the Board on its selection, to report on that committee’s activities. When Brotzen publicly made it clear that the Board had never met or even communicated with the faculty group, open conflict became inevitable. In the face of vocal and widespread faculty and student opposition, Masterson resigned the presidency five tumultuous days later.

I have no idea who took this picture. (If anyone can tell me, I would be grateful.) [Update: It was deBremaecker.] It’s one of about a dozen of this meeting, all taken with some small personal camera. The title of this post is written on the back of it. The pictures show a packed room, and the tension is palpable. The fellow seated in front of Brotzen with the pipe is Holmes Richter, a professor of chemistry who had been the Dean of the University since 1950. He was not happy.

One of my co-workers in the Woodson has been laboriously sorting a large collection of papers which consist mostly of old land leases that belonged to William Marsh Rice. This is pretty tedious work. (It’s also dirty and uncomfortable–papers that have been sitting around that long get moldy.) These papers aren’t all that valuable historically, but among them were a couple of boxes called “Sundry Contracts” and “Financial Records.” Here, things get more interesting. I’ll be posting a few of the surprises we found.

The financial records turned out to be seemingly every single receipt collected for every single expenditure of the William Marsh Rice Institute from the moment of its formation in 1891. Since there was no actual school, these are extremely minor purchases: stamps and stationery, the salary of a night watchman for the Institute property downtown, fees for the filing and copying of legal documents, etc.

The most interesting receipts are in the 1907 folder. They are for the reimbursement of travel expenses for several candidates for the presidency of the Institute, including Edgar Odell Lovett, who eventually got the job. I’m now busy trying to understand who some of these guys were and why they got interviews.

The picture in the header above is one of my favorites. The man facing the camera on the right is Edgar Odell Lovett, the first president of Rice, and the man on the left is Herbert Hoover. They’re standing on the back steps of the Physics Building in late May, 1925, just as the school year was ending. I first saw this picture years ago and just loved it for its look–the straw boater hats, the view of the crowd from behind, the way Lovett and Hoover are standing.

Several years later, I was going through the 1924-25 volume of the Rice newspaper, the Thresher, looking for something completely unrelated when I found a story about Hoover’s remarks that day. I’m sure he wasn’t trying to be funny, but to anyone who studies the history of American higher education what he said is both subtle and, frankly, quite amusing. It makes the photo that much more delicious.

Eighty-five years later, Rice is still not an old university but neither is it so young as to be free of “set rules and traditions.” Enough time has passed for traditions to spring up and die, for some to evolve beyond recognition, for others to become so ingrained that we barely notice them.

And it’s all there in the archives–newspaper articles, scrapbooks, photographs, letters from homesick freshmen, diaries, memos from presidents and provosts, minutes of department meetings, bits and scraps found in every corner of the campus and beyond. At least once a week, something amazing bubbles up in the Woodson Research Center. I’ll use this forum to share them.

One more thing: if you happen to have something amazing that I don’t know about, please let me know about it!