I hope there’s not a bug down there.

Trying to help someone with a project about the history of engineering the other day, I thought that a worthwhile place to begin might be the papers of Jim Sims ’41, the long serving Civil Engineering professor and administrator. That seemed to work out pretty well, but as a bonus I discovered several folders full of photos of things you don’t normally see photographed. For example, here’s the back side of the engineering annex, probably early to mid-60s:

There were several pretty intriguing interior shots as well. Is this a mimeo machine? (If it is, I have a very good story in which it plays a central role.)

But this is the one I really wonder about. I get that this is a computer, but the picture looks early. (None were dated, by the way). Also, I think this is in the Mech Lab but I’m not certain. So, anybody?

Bonus: Here’s a tragic story from my youth. My mom had one of those Corvairs when I was in high school and as I was getting close to my driver’s license I was licking my chops to drive it. Two weeks before I got my license she sold it and bought this:

One day last week as I was hunting for an image I came upon an entire slide carousel with each picture numbered and all in precise order. To me this was an immediately interesting exception to the haphazard arrangement that is usual with thing humans touch. On further investigation I discovered that it was a presentation called “The Way We Are: Rice University, 1981-82.” It looks like the kind of dog-and-pony show that administrators take on the road for alumni gatherings and such. I’m not sure exactly who put it together, but it really does give us a snapshot of the way we were (or at least the way we thought we were, or possibly just the way we wanted to present ourselves even though we knew better) thirty-one years ago.

A lot of the slides are frankly boring–at least I find them so–but I suppose they’re what people expect to see: Lovett Hall, azaleas blooming along the main entrance road, students cavorting and so on. It’s been my experience that people don’t like too many surprises and it’s certainly the case that alumni enjoy being reminded of their happy times on campus.

There’s much in this presentation, though, that has become with time genuinely touching or arresting or puzzling, all things that I’m in favor of. There’s a lot to see, but I’m going to start with something that I simply don’t understand. Can someone tell me what we’re looking at here? It was both important enough to include in the presentation and ephemeral enough that I have no idea what it is. In particular, what is behind him?

Bonus: There’s an audio tape that goes with the slides. I haven’t tried it yet. (It occurs to me just now that this post could have been included in my “Obsolete Technologies” series.)

Extra bonus: The dunce caps are still up on the light poles by the Shepherd School. The scene got even more interesting today with the addition of some logs on a golf cart.

Here’s yet another demonstration of how twisty things can be in the archives. As I was searching the photographic record of the early commencements, intent on understanding exactly how the processions worked, I had a nice laugh over this picture of the 1921 ceremony:

For one wild moment I dared hope that the figure in the plaid skirt right where the procession is turning the corner might be a bagpiper. (That would totally rule!) Zoom in on it, though, and you’ll see something much more mundane–a young woman taking pictures.

Moments later I found her again, on the balcony overlooking the ceremony, still holding her camera:

As I continued through the file, I found a piece of paper on which someone had attempted to identify everyone on the platform that day. It’s incomplete, but still a pretty good try. And at the bottom in parenthesis is added “Bessie Smith on the balcony.”

So now I know her name! After vowing to do more research on her later, I went about my next task–searching for a picture of Rice girls playing golf that I absolutely know is in one of the early scrapbooks. I didn’t know which one, of course, so I wound up spending a couple of afternoons scouring a half dozen of them. I found it eventually, but I also unexpectedly ran into Bessie Smith again. Here she is (on the left) with friends in the quad:

And here’s the one that sent me scrambling for the yearbooks:

By now I’ve seen her in four photos and in three of them she’s taking pictures. So I wondered if there might be some kind of reference to this in her yearbook entries and there certainly was. It turns out that she was photo editor of the Campanile every year she was at Rice. Her married name was MacLaughlin, but I know nothing else about her.

Bonus: Odd doings over by the new art installation today–a guy was putting pointy hats on all the light posts.

Don’t they look glorious?

I’ve been going crazy over academic processions today! It’s totally out of control. When you go back and look closely at exactly where they are going and when, it seems like a mad kaleidoscope of marching.

Well, sort of. You know what I mean.

Here’s something surprising from the first commencement in 1916–they’re headed down the right side of the quad! Complete maniacs, obviously.

The academic procession seems to have proceeded in two distinct sections in 1917. Here’s section 1, made up of faculty, trustees and distinguished guests:

But here’s section 2, the students. Where are they going?? (All I can think of is the marching band in the blind alley in Animal House.)

One more for today (although there is more to come!)–this is the only picture I found that shows the beginning of a procession at the Mech Lab. It isn’t commencement, though. It’s the 1919 Thanksgiving Day Reunion.

That's the Chemistry Annex to the left of the Mech Lab. It became the Engineering Annex when the Chemistry Building opened.

Bonus: My begging for Rice artifacts is beginning to pay real dividends. In addition to the toilet seat, I’ve got some really good leads on some beanies and I got at least some photos of other great stuff. I found this email, describing a single cowboy boot, especially pleasant:

Attached is a quick snapshot of a Rice University boot Rocky Carroll made for George H. W. Bush back in 1994. I believe Zen Camacho had a similar pair made. I only have one boot. One of my roommates from Jones College has the other one. 

You can’t beat that.

I really appreciate all the ideas and questions in the comments this week. Some puzzling things have certainly cropped up these past few days.

I’ll start with the football tucked under the fellow’s arm in this picture from Monday. A couple of people noted how odd it looks and wondered if it were used in some other game entirely. The answer is no, that’s what footballs looked like back then. Both the equipment and the game itself were evolving at a rapid rate in those days. Here you can get a good look at one of those balls in the team picture from 1916. (Try to ignore the horrifying owl and just look up at the guy holding the trophy. The ball is tucked between his legs.)

Next, on to the planter that’s visible in the photo of the procession from the 1920 commencement. That most definitely is a planter rather than leftover masonry, and a carefully chosen one at that. Rice actually bought two kinds of planters to add some interest to the early landscaping. You can see both if you zoom in on this picture of the first commencement ceremony in 1916. There are two plain square ones, the first near the Physics side of the Administration Building and the second towards the west end of Physics. Look closely through the cloisters and you can see a couple of the fancier ones on the east side of Physics by the auditorium.

They later acquired more of these planters and put them in the academic quad. This photo from commencement in 1921 gives a fabulous look at them:

And here’s a charming picture of some of Mrs. Lovett’s young Kentucky relatives posing next to one on the other side of the quad in 1919:

Finally, I really like the suggestion that the “civilians” marching without robes in the 1920 procession might be staff. They can’t be trustees, as there were only seven, including Lovett. If I get a minute I’ll see if I can find anything that might otherwise explain it.

Oh, someone asked for a photo of the 1919 commencement procession. Here you go:

Just a quick one this afternoon–we’re headed to the Rockets game tonight, where I anticipate booing Kobe with great enthusiasm.

I had occasion today to discuss how the early commencement ceremonies were arranged. I’m pretty sure that the faculty robed in the Mech Lab and the students either in the dorms or at home. The procession clearly began at the Mech Lab and came down the road towards the center of the academic quad, then turned towards the administration building along the front of Physics:

It’s a bit blurry, but if you zoom in you’ll see Dr. Lovett at the right front and H.A. Wilson at the left front. The fellow in the middle is the speaker, whose name has somehow slipped my mind. Right behind them is Captain Baker and Father James Kirwin, the Catholic priest who gave the invocation. (Father Kirwin was quite a significant figure in both Houston and Galveston.) The third row is full of trustees, and they’re followed by the faculty. One of the things that’s a little puzzling here is the pretty substantial group of civilians in between the robed faculty and the robed students. I don’t know what that’s all about.

And here’s a photo of the ceremony itself, including the entire audience:

Note the Rice flag on the building.

I bet I’ve looked at this picture four or five dozen times over the course of twenty years, but every single time before today I missed seeing the Community House across the street. This is one more example of the beauty of working in the same archive for so long. Until now I just hadn’t ever had the Community House in my mind when I looked at it. Makes me wonder what else I’m missing.

Bonus: Lee Pecht and Mary Bixby were caught on film today attempting to carry out some kind of secret project.

It turned out to be a new display in the trophy case in the RMC. It’s another nice one, too. This 1947 Rondelet dress is just one piece of it.

This is quite an odd photo. It looks to be three baseball players plus one football player. At least, he’s wearing a different kind of uniform and he seems to have a football tucked under his arm.

But where are they? I’ve looked at this until I’m almost dizzy and I’m still not sure. I think  the building under construction must be West Hall and they’re standing on its west side. That would make some sense, as the baseball field was quite near there. Here are a couple of construction pictures (obviously taken somewhat earlier in the process) where you can see the wooden wall:

That would mean that Main Street is behind them, which is plausible. But friends, I am deeply troubled by those gravel walks. They just don’t seem right. Just for some perspective, here’s an aerial shot of campus from the mid-1920s:

Someone please put me out of my misery and tell me what I’m missing.

Bonus: My last plea for memorabilia has yielded something both unexpected and totally awesome. Alert reader Jeff Ross realized that he had this amazing thing gathering dust in his garage and knew that it should be shared. He says he got it at a garage sale about thirty years ago, but I’d bet it’s significantly older than that.

Yes, that is a hand-carved wooden Rice Owl toilet seat. We’re still thinking about the best way to display it.

So we have these small wooden blocks that we use to prop things up in display cases:

I realized today what the original use of these blocks had been when I noticed that this particular one had something affixed to it:

I laughed when I read it and it’s making me laugh again now.

Bonus: Go Jays!

First, let me show you a video about Cohen House. There are three fantastic things in this: a picture of my daughter at her wedding reception, pictures of Alan Chapman and Marjorie Bray’s wedding reception and footage of me creeping around in the building, a rare sighting of me in my natural habitat.

Second, if I may be so bold, I’d like to ask for something. We in the Woodson find ourselves in fairly desperate need of clothes. Not for ourselves, of course, but for our poor mannequins. Anything Rice-related at all would be welcome–beer bike tshirts, letter sweaters, Archi-arts costumes, Rondelet dresses, band uniforms, cheerleader or athletic uniforms (old helmets, especially leather ones, are particularly coveted), even just examples of ordinary student wear when you were at Rice.  Here’s one example of what I mean–this cute “Rice”dress (in blue and grey) belonged to Nancy Moore Eubank, ’55:

So go ahead and rifle through your closets or your grandmother’s attic and let me know what you find. (Either post a comment here or send me an email).

Bonus: Speaking of email, if I owe you one here’s why I’m so slow. This is nine (9) book trucks full of materials, mostly requested by people working on centennial related projects. I’ve been in these archives for twenty years and I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s awesome, but we’re getting a little punchy.

In an unusual move, I actually went looking for something specific for this blog today. I’d been mulling over what I knew about the events that were held at the Community House and I was curious enough about it that I just couldn’t stop myself from doing a little bit of digging. (I don’t really have time for this right now! I’m trying to get a presentation put together on the early history of women athletes at Rice and I most definitely should have been spending my time on that.)

Well, there was a lot of interesting material to be found. From the day it opened the Community House was a huge hit with the students–they congregated there during the day, took meals, played cards and just generally fooled around. Almost immediately a series of dances was scheduled and they were extremely popular. Here’s the story about the April, 1920 dance that I found the ticket to in a scrapbook about a month ago:

The Rev. Masterson had in fact declared a moratorium on dancing for the duration of Lent. This was greeted with some dismay at the time, so it’s nice to see the students enjoyed themselves so much after Easter. (I suppose that was his point all along.) Note that Mrs. Eugene Blake served as one of the chaperones. This and other stories in the Thresher help solve what had been a small mystery for me. I have a picture (from somewhat later–I’m guessing the 1930s) of a woman outside Autry House, labeled only “Mrs. Blake.” Here she is:

She seems to have been a sort of House Mother and she may have come with the house, as it sounds like she served a similar role at Camp Logan.

Bonus: I’m sure you all remember that I’ve talked about a men’s fashion fad that swept Houston from about 1918 to roughly 1921 (and President Lovett’s resistance to it)–very high collars and a quite particular style of hat. The Thresher is always full of ads for snappy clothes and I saw quite a few for this kind of hat. The style doesn’t seem to have a specific name, at least not that I’ve come across.

This is one of many checks to Rice's valet, Charles Jones.

This is a strange one, even for me. There were a couple of boxes of William Marsh Rice’s correspondence sitting out on the map case today–I don’t know who was using them or why. But there they were, so I felt obliged to take a look. Inside one I found a folder full of cancelled checks, all personal rather than business in nature. The dates on them began in the spring of 1896, when the Rices were in Houston hoping that the warm weather would improve Mrs. Rice’s health. It didn’t–she moved on to a spa in Waukesha, Wisconsin where she died. There are a handful of checks written there and then the remainder came after William Marsh Rice returned to New York. There are checks in the folder all the way up until his death in 1900.

As I mentioned, these checks seem to be on an account used for purely personal expenses. For example, quite a few, both large and small, are written to Siegel Cooper and Co., which turns out to be a department store that began in Chicago but opened a huge store in New York in 1896. (The link is well worth a look, by the way.)

Here’s the store:

Rice wrote checks to one particular establishment far more than any other. There are easily a couple of dozen of them in the folder. I was pretty frustrated for a while because I couldn’t really make heads or tails of his handwriting on these checks, but finally, in desperation, I just typed into google what I guessed it said: Our Home Granula Co. (Note that he wrote this check on a piece of regular paper. He did that a lot. I don’t know if it was normal or if it was millionaire behavior.)

Well, Our Home Granula Co. was a real thing. It was a health food sold as having curative power, a cereal similar to grape nuts that was invented and sold by a sanitorium in Dansville, New York. Mr. Rice bought a very large quantity of it. Tiny ads for Our Home Granula ran in the back pages of many newspapers. Here’s the text of one of those ads:

Granula, An Incomparable Food. 
PREPARED from Winter Wheat, containing all 
the nutritious elements of that grain, and is the 
best food made for invalids and children. It is a 
Twice COOKED FOOD, ready for immediate able use, 
and yet will keep in a dry place for years unaltered in 
quality.  

Unequaled as a diet for cases of nervous exhaustion 
and debility, constipation and dyspepsia. Has been 
tested for years by James C. Jackson, M. D., in Our 
Home Hygienic Institute, upon all classes of invalids, 
with remarkable success. It is one of the cheapest 
foods in use, a pound of it containing more absolute 
nutriment for brain and body than an equal weight of 
any preparation in the market. Delicious as a diet.  

Single cases of 34 lbs. each, • – - $3 00  

Single cases of 48 lbs. each, • – - 6 00  

Less than case — per lb., – - – - 15c.  

Trial Box by mail, prepaid, – - – 86c«  

The above are net prices without discount or varia- 
tion, delivered on cars of N. Y., Lake Erie & W., or 
Delaware, Lackawanna & W. R. R., at Dansville. In 
ordering, do not fail to direct how goods shall be sent, 
by freight or express, and by which R. R. Make all 
remittances by Money Order, Registered Letter or N. 
Y. Draft. Local checks not received. Ask your gro- 
cer.  

I find myself at a loss for words.

Bonus: Just when you start to think you might actually know too much about someone, the mystery creeps back in. During the period in 1896 when he was in Houston, Mr. Rice wrote several checks to the Koken Barber’s Supply Company. Among these checks is the single largest in the folder–it’s for $600.

This is mystifying. Even if William Marsh Rice was the world’s first metrosexual, that’s way too much for beard maintenance. In fact, a quick look at an old Koken Barber’s Supply Catalogue makes it clear that it would be hard to get to $600 without buying several of their hydraulic lift barber chairs. I guess he could have been outfitting a barber shop, but why do it out of his personal funds?

It really is a pretty nice beard.

It’s a measure of how strange my job is that the least interesting things to me in these photos are the cross-dressing women in blackface. In truth, I barely looked at them. Both cross-dressing and blackface were quite commonly done in entertainments in the late teens and early ’20s. These pictures are from an event called a “Stunt Party,” a show that included music, dancing and vaudeville sketches. They were a very popular collegiate amusement across the country. This one was put on by the Elizabeth Baldwin Literary Society.  The photos, which I found in Pender Turnbull’s things, are dated “circa 1918-19,” but it has to be 1919.

I know that because of the wooden building on the right. You can tell from the background that the girls are across Main Street from campus. That wooden frame building can be nothing except a corner of the Rice Community House that was moved by the Episcopal Archdiocese from Camp Logan in 1919 to serve as a student center for Rice.

Look at how dressed up those folks by the door are!

So a month ago we had one picture of the Community House and now we have three. I am most pleased.

This looks so graceful! And intelligent, too.

Bonus: In a related development, we got a big box of stuff from Sid Rich today. I can’t wait to have a closer look at it on Monday.

I’ll be on the road this afternoon and evening so you get an early post today, just a couple of odds and ends. First, as I continued thinking about this picture

I recalled that before they were installed there had been considerable discussion about what the lamp posts should look like. Here’s a drawing made by Wilmer Waldo of his proposal, showing roughly the same area where the girls are posing:

I have to say that I think Lovett made the right choice. All those globes look too busy.

Second, I ran across this beautiful shot in Maxwell O. Reade’s scrapbook:

I’m curious about where precisely he was standing when he took it, but mostly I’m just glad he did. This is a unique picture. As usual, Reade labeled it–this time only with the date, 1938. You can see clearly that the allee between South Hall and West Hall is still a road, but even better there’s a great view of the long primrose hedge between the dorms and the football field. It looks enormous! Here it is at ground level:

Bonus: In a major surprise, they have a post with John Travolta in it up on the Glasscock School blog!

See you all back in Houston.

Click to zoom in. There's no date on this, but it's pretty early, I'd guess early 20s.

In the comments the other day I was asked about an early rail spur that was used to bring coal to the campus power plant. This is one of those things that you can’t just go look up in a file. Everything I do know about it I’ve learned in bits and pieces, sometimes by accident, over the years. I’m sure that there is much more about it that I don’t know.

The first time I came across it was in President Lovett’s papers, which contain most of the records that remain of the early design and construction history of the campus. Here’s a 1913 letter from my old friend Wilmer Waldo, who was responsible for much of the basic infrastructure work (such as drainage, grading, laying out the roads, etc.):

Waldo did get this job and did most of the work to build the spur, which came off the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway. You can see it clearly in the drawings done by the students in the early surveying classes at Rice, dropping down from the north, crossing Harris Gully and swinging around behind the Power Plant. Here’s one from 1916:

The drawing ends at the campus boundary, though, so the next thing I wondered was what the “spur” was spurring off from. I assumed it was the tracks to the north, up near where Highway 59 is today, but I never had a good reason to stop what I was doing and go look. So I just forgot about it. Then when one of my colleagues was organizing the old William Marsh Rice land lease records (remember the “Sundry Contracts” file?) he turned up this blueprint that confirmed my hunch:

Unsurprisingly, there aren’t many images of the spur to be found. The one at top might be the only one where you can actually get a good look at the tracks and here’s one from 1921 where some railcars are visible at the right edge:

The only other picture I’ve seen that might show railcars is this one, which I scanned because I was interested in the sheds and only later noticed something else in the background right in between the Mech Lab and Physics:

The next obvious question is when did they take it out. Short answer: I don’t know. The beginning of a longer answer: it might be gone in aerial shots from 1928. I’ll look closer.

I actually went looking for other images of the west side of the Physics Building and I did find an interesting one. I’d guess this was taken at roughly the same time as the one from yesterday, maybe a tiny bit earlier, just looking the other way. Zoom in and you can see the interesting part: work being done along the side of the building. I don’t know what they’re doing there, maybe some kind of cleanup.

I did note the other day that there were various pipes and apparatus in the same vicinity as the wagon. I don’t know whether it was all there back this early or not.

I also thought I had seen a picture of the same spot in Pender Turnbull’s collection. When I went and looked, though, I discovered that I was mistaken. (!) Instead of the side of the building, the image I had in mind shows the back when it was under construction, 1913-14.

I think this is a really nice picture. It’s certainly unusual, one of only a few early ones taken on this side of the building. It has a lot of things in it that I really like–the newly planted cedar elms, the light pole, the girls, and,of course the umbrella.

Bonus: Sometimes I make mistakes, but sometimes I don’t. After I put up this picture the other day I kept thinking that there was something familiar about the RMC sign on the left.

I had a sense that I’d photographed it before somewhere else. (I take hundreds of pictures on campus every week.) I went looking and there it was, taken a couple of months ago over by the FE&P building. I’m not sure when it moved.

You almost never see it in pictures. I guess it’s kind of an in-between place and not especially scenic. People pose in front of Lovett Hall but not there so much. The other day, though, I stumbled across a picture that someone took from an odd angle between the building and the old road. It took me a moment to understand what it was. The photo was taken facing across the quad, at some difficult to determine time. We can see Cohen House and Palmer Church, so it has to be at least the late ’20s, but otherwise it’s tough to pin down. The state of the hedges might be the best clue. I’ll look carefully when I get back to Houston.

Here’s roughly the same view today:

The manhole cover seems to be in the same place, but now it’s flush with the ground. That strikes me as a significant improvement.

Cake!!

Looks like that rascal Al Van Helden again (lower right), making sure he gets his piece.

I skied for six hours today and it was a much needed break. So naturally I’m now sitting by a fire, enjoying an Irish coffee and ransacking my laptop for some Rice pictures that I can just post without having to say anything about them–I can’t think straight. Luckily, I have found just the thing. Here are two images taken at a Rice alumni gathering with Dr. Lovett in New Orleans in 1938:

Nice ironwork.

I know very little about these pictures but I find them absolutely charming. They seem to have been taken at the home of the young man in the bottom photo–I only know his name, RT Wilbanks. Dr. Lovett had a reputation for being somewhat forbidding, but that little girl shows no hesitation about holding his hand and he seems to be getting quite a kick out of her.

Karen Rogers tells us in a comment to yesterday’s post about Dr. Lovett and the New Orleans alumni that R.T. Wilbanks described this visit in an article he wrote for the Rice Historical Society’s magazine, the Cornerstone. Sure enough, I just found it. It’s in the very first issue, Volume 1, Number 1, from the summer of 1995. Here’s the link. This issue apparently came out before the discovery of page numbers, but if you browse through it you’ll find the article near the end.

Like the photographs themselves, this story is charming. Wilbanks was struck by exactly the same thing that I was struck by–that Lovett, who could seem so distant and formal at times, was warm, friendly and engaging when in a social setting. He even took the time to send a present later to Wilbanks’s little daughter, who turns out to be named Vera.

I’ve been on the road today so I don’t have too much to say. I do want to show you something, though. Here’s another image from Pender Turnbull’s papers. I believe this is the kind of thing that the kids today refer to as “random.”

The problem here is obvious: I count five ladies hats. If forced to guess, I’d bet it’s the black one but I really don’t know. I feel pretty sure that it’s possible to figure this out by looking at pictures of the Garden Party after Commencement.

Speaking of random, here’s another one. Remember the post about the weird “Kid Parties” in the late teens? There were a bunch of pictures from one of them in the Turnbull collection, most of which I’d seen before. The thing is, though, these were all labeled. The most interesting label was on this one:

It identifies the party as being held at Lel Red’s house at 817 Caroline. (Here‘s another, quite different, post about her.) Most interestingly, it also identifies the house in the background as the home of Caesar Lombardi, one of Rice’s first trustees. There’s probably a way to figure that out as well, but I’m on vacation and won’t be getting to that any time soon.

Bonus: 

Hmmmm . . . . .