Rice History Corner

From the April Fool’s edition of the Thresher, this is exactly the kind of stupid thing that makes me laugh:

Bonus: This is entertaining also.

No names, no date, and I have no idea what they’re looking at. But it doesn’t look good:

Bonus: My always helpful readers have informed me that I flipped at least two out three of yesterday’s pictures. The Rice History Corner regrets but is not particularly surprised by the error. Let’s try again, shall we?

We have very few pictures of the early years of Jones College in the Woodson (and even fewer written materials) so I was happy to find these images from December, 1959 in the Houston Post collection today. I can’t properly express what a joy it is to find this new source of information about Rice and how grateful I am to have access to it. It’s invigorating. I haven’t had time to look at the Post microfilm to see why these pictures were taken but my best off-the-top-of-my-head guess is that it was some sort of human interest story about the Rice co-eds at the end of the semester.I’ll check on Monday.

I love the campus scene on the wall here. I’ve never seen anything quite like it and I wish I had it myself. And if I’m not mistaken that studious young woman at the desk is Evelyn Thomas Nolen ’62, who provided distinguished service to Rice and to the historical profession for over thirty years as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Southern History:

This was my favorite of the bunch. I’m not sure how this would work out in practice, though. What if you had classes in different buildings??

The photos were dated December 9 and it looks like they’re just getting started on the Christmas decorations:

Bonus:

I can no longer remember what I was looking for when I came across this delightful little booklet:

It’s nice idea–the library staff getting together for a sort of smorgasbord at the home of Mary Alice Hamilton and then collecting all the recipes for distribution:

But it was 1966 and some of these recipes are . . . regrettable. It’s hard to single anything out as the most quease-inducing but if forced I guess would choose this very peculiar “salad.” I was ok until we got to “Heat bean juice:”

There’s also a sweet nod to Rice history from long-time librarian Pender Turnbull, who pays tribute to Mrs. Weiser, the wife of chemistry professor Harry Weiser, with  a fairly tasty sounding dessert:

And hats off to Madith DeZurko for her clever formatting of a totally unnecessary dish:

Bonus: Willy Week is in full swing. I saw this when I went into the RMC:

And this when I came out:

If you thought English Zero was deflating wait until you see this, also from 1935:

Sent home to your parents too! (That would probably be a FERPA violation today.) As I said yesterday, they were not fooling around. Rice students had not yet become paying customers and so there was no reason to relax either disciplinary or academic standards to keep them around. Screw up or even start looking like you might screw up and we will make sure your parents know about it. Continue and you’ll wind up on probation–every semester saw long lists posted in front of Lovett Hall of the current crop of endangered students. If you didn’t fix it, out you went.

Today’s a travel day for me, be back on campus tomorrow.

I’m out of town for a meeting and can manage to grab just a moment to post. I offer only this, currently my top candidate for Most Dispiriting Course Title Ever:

These people were not kidding around either. Although anyone could get sent back to English 0 at any time, it turns out that everyone enrolled at Rice had to complete it by passing the legendary spelling test. This is from the February 12, 1943 Thresher:

Bonus: Big city.

Here’s Florence Stancliff ’27, circa late-’50s, showing them how it was done back in her day. I actually have no idea what’s going on here or even whose leg that is but it doesn’t look relaxing at all. I admit it might be fun, though:

We’re all familiar with the pictures of John F. Kennedy delivering his moonshot speech at Rice stadium. They’re iconic images. But today in the Houston Post photo archives at the HMRC I was surprised to find pictures of his brother Bobby visiting campus in the fall of 1959. He was best known at the time as the chief counsel for the Senate Labor Rackets Committee, a post he would soon resign to work on his brother’s presidential campaign. He was on campus to speak at the Rice Associates dinner, which was held that year in Cohen House. Before the dinner he visited with President Houston in what was then the president’s conference room:

(I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t mention that I’ve talked about those chairs before.)

And of course you have to have your picture taken by the fireplace in Dr. Houston’s office:

Media coverage:

Bonus: The Julia Ideson Building lampposts are similar but not identical to ours. I wouldn’t be surprised if they came from the same manufacturer. It might be possible to figure that out.

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I had a very busy day today, full of fun but exhausting. I’m going to turn in. Catch y’all in the morning.

Bonus: From the printmaking studio.

The Woodson recently received a painting by Peter Sartorius ’68. We are very grateful to him. It’s a lovely little work and it’s notable because it depicts an important and almost completely forgotten piece of Rice history:

This is the first home of the studio art program and the haunt of David Parsons, who taught many classes there. I’ll let Mr. Sartorius tell about it himself:

My contribution to the Class of 1968 Golden Reunion commemorative publication included mention of a small watercolor/ink drawing I did in 1966 of Rice’s original art studio. It was located in a small, rickety steel building tucked among the trees near the Old Rice Stadium. I was an architecture student at the time and the art courses were then a part of the School of Architecture. All the drawing/sculpture courses I took from Professor David Parsons were located in this building. I also took many of the art history courses taught by Professor Katherine (Tsanoff) Brown. I soon discovered that I enjoyed the life drawing and art history courses, as well as doing renderings of campus buildings, more than the courses required in the architecture curriculum. Long story short, a few disillusioned architecture students began discussing the possibility of establishing an art major at Rice. Soon thereafter, a curriculum was developed by Professors Brown and Parsons, with input from several “archi” students, including myself, interested in an art major option. Once the curriculum was accepted by the University, I believe I may have been the first to declare an art major at Rice.

When I originally contacted Professor Karin Broker, then chair of Visual and Dramatic Arts, she said “This period [of the art program] is sorely missing from our archive of memories.” Recently, Lee Pecht, University Archivist and Director of Special Collections, indicated that my little painting could be the only historical record of this original studio building. Anecdotally, this painting was done on a whim after a life drawing class, spurred by the consistent interest of the cross country track team in running past the building during our life drawing sessions. Go figure!

To the best of my knowledge there exist a couple of pictures where you can see one or another corner of this building but this is by far the clearest view of it we have.

Bonus: I can’t tell you how happy I am that we’ve honored Ralph O’Connor by naming the street by the tennis center for him. I also have to admit that I think Entrance 17 Drive is a pretty snappy name too. I wish I’d thought of it myself.