Rice University History At 6100 South Main St.

[capt. kirk]

I've just taken an interest in Rice University. Has there ever been any year(s) that it won any championship? The only pro football player who comes to my mind who attended Rice was Tommy Kramer. When I attended the University of Arkansas from 1984-86, I remember that Rice University was in the same conference.

THE OLD SOUTHWEST CONFERENCE.....IN THE 40'S THEY WON A BOWL GAME I THINK........IN 61/62 THEY WERE PRETTY GOOD UNDER JESS NEELY........CWS BASEBALL 2003........FOOTBALL 2008 BEAT WESTERN MICHIGAN IN TEXAS BOWL..........THE REPLAY OF DICKIE MEAGLE RUNNING FOR A TOUCHDOWN AND A PLAYER COMES OFF THE BENCH OF THE OPPOSING TEAM AND TACKLES HIM........OTHER THAN THAT THEY ARENT VERY GOOD...........BUT RICE IS ONE OF THE BEST FOR EDUCATION FOR THE MONEY...........ONLY $10,000 PER SEMESTER................BERKMAN FOR THE ASTROS WENT TO RICE.................KING HILL FOR RICE FOOTBALL IN THE LATE 50'S..................KEN HATFIELD WENT TO ARKANSAS WITH JERRY JONES AND JIMMIE JOHNSON AND COACHED AT RICE FOR A WHILE.........YOU KNOW JOHNSON AND JONES, RIGHT..............JUST TYPE RICE INSTITUTE IN THE SEARCH BLOCK AND IT WILL GIVE YOU A BRIEF HISTORY

I've just taken an interest in Rice University. Has there ever been any year(s) that it won any championship? The only pro football player who comes to my mind who attended Rice was Tommy Kramer. When I attended the University of Arkansas from 1984-86, I remember that Rice University was in the same conference.

LARRY IZZO OF THE DOLPHINS PLAYED FOR RICE

[JLWM8609]

THE OLD SOUTHWEST CONFERENCE.....IN THE 40'S THEY WON A BOWL GAME I THINK........IN 61/62 THEY WERE PRETTY GOOD UNDER JESS NEELY........CWS BASEBALL 2003........FOOTBALL 2008 BEAT WESTERN MICHIGAN IN TEXAS BOWL..........THE REPLAY OF DICKIE MEAGLE RUNNING FOR A TOUCHDOWN AND A PLAYER COMES OFF THE BENCH OF THE OPPOSING TEAM AND TACKLES HIM........OTHER THAN THAT THEY ARENT VERY GOOD...........BUT RICE IS ONE OF THE BEST FOR EDUCATION FOR THE MONEY...........ONLY $10,000 PER SEMESTER................BERKMAN FOR THE ASTROS WENT TO RICE.................KING HILL FOR RICE FOOTBALL IN THE LATE 50'S..................KEN HATFIELD WENT TO ARKANSAS WITH JERRY JONES AND JIMMIE JOHNSON AND COACHED AT RICE FOR A WHILE.........YOU KNOW JOHNSON AND JONES, RIGHT..............JUST TYPE RICE INSTITUTE IN THE SEARCH BLOCK AND IT WILL GIVE YOU A BRIEF HISTORY

LARRY IZZO OF THE DOLPHINS PLAYED FOR RICE

I know you're new, but could you please turn your caps lock key off?

[Retama]

The last Southwest Conference football game was played at Rice Stadium between UH and Rice U, which I find sort of ironic since Houston was the last team admitted to the conference and then after much lobbying. We went to that game, though I never got a program because some bastard bought the whole bunch of them up.

After the game, some guy who won a contest went down on the field to pull a giant prop electric plug from a giant prop electric socket. When he did, all the lights went off in the stadium.

In heaven Kern Tips wiped a tear from his eye.

[Heights2Bastrop]

Finally - someone who remembers Kern Tips!

[devonhart]

I thought they would be dorkier, but mostly look like 60s kids.

 

[brhaltx]

Pretty much how it looked when I went there.

[Tumbleweed_Tx]

one problem... that's a '76 Cutlass wagon...

 

 

[devonhart]

one problem... that's a '76 Cutlass wagon...

 

I had my suspicions, more the bicycles and the stereo FM headset one dude is wearing. I corrected the title with a little explantion on Youtube. Don't know how, if possible, to correct the title here. I guess the UofH librarian who keyed the citation has a lot of esplaining to do. Thanks for the correction.

 

[brhaltx]

That might explain why it looks a lot like Rice in the early eighties.

[mkultra25]

I thought it looked more like the early-to-mid-seventies. If you look through old Campaniles (yearbooks), the student body in 1967 didn't look anything like those pictured in the film. In the 1968 Campanile, the male students are all well-groomed and wearing coats and ties for the class pictures. 1969 still had the coats and ties, but there were significant countercultural elements on display. 1970 dispensed with the class pictures altogether, as well as anything resembling a standard yearbook format, in favor of a smaller paperback filled with stream-of-consciousness photos and quotes from luminaries such as Ken Kesey. By the 1971 edition, many were looking less like engineers and more like hippies, and there's quite a bit of facial hair in evidence. 

 

I initially thought one of the profs pictured in a lecture setting was a dead giveaway that the film was shot later, but it turns out that 1967 was the first year he was on the faculty. 

[mkultra25]

A Rice alum on Twitter expressed certainty that it's from the mid-to-late 70s - he recognized many of the people in the film:

 

https://twitter.com/wegreenberg/status/488693417522626561

[Specwriter]

I thought it looked more like the early-to-mid-seventies. If you look through old Campaniles (yearbooks), the student body in 1967 didn't look anything like those pictured in the film. In the 1968 Campanile, the male students are all well-groomed and wearing coats and ties for the class pictures. 1969 still had the coats and ties, but there were significant countercultural elements on display. 1970 dispensed with the class pictures altogether, as well as anything resembling a standard yearbook format, in favor of a smaller paperback filled with stream-of-consciousness photos and quotes from luminaries such as Ken Kesey. By the 1971 edition, many were looking less like engineers and more like hippies, and there's quite a bit of facial hair in evidence. 

 

 

What a difference a decade makes.

 

[Montrose1100]

Hello All!

Once in a while I stumble across some cool historic renderings on tumblr. Unfortunately the down side of the blogging site is posters rarely have sources. So I'm curious if anyone knows anything about this image?

Edited March 26, 2016 by Montrose1100
Added photo.

[Fringe]

Interesting. Must be an artist rendering? Or perhaps a picture of a European setting they used as a design for Rice? Of course there was never a dome like that at Rice and the sally port is much to tall. A lot of similarities though. Cool picture. 

[Ross]

The date on the picture predates the start of construction by a couple of years, so it was probably conceptual. 

[Montrose1100]

I suppose this could be moved to the Houston: Potential thread. 

Browsing the internet, the current administration building was designed by Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson (Boston).

No idea what firm created this, and the image doesn't show up in searches. I'll attempt to reach out to the blogger and see where they found it.

[FilioScotia]

It's clearly an artist's rendering of what the Rice Endowment wanted, but I'm guessing that fell through when they learned how much it would cost. They had money for sure, but nowhere near that much money. Everything had to be scaled down to an affordable level. It still ended up looking pretty great. Rice has one of the more beautiful campuses in the country. 

[mkultra25]

This was a preliminary rendering for an auditorium and administration building by Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson's New York Office. It is also reproduced on pp. 23-24 of Stephen Fox's monograph "The General Plan of the William M. Rice Institute and Its Architectural Development", a PDF of which can be downloaded here:

https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/35961/generalplanofwil00foxs.pdf?sequence=1

It is undated in Fox's monograph, but 1909 is a reasonable guess. There is a hand-colored General Plan drawn by William Ward Watkin dated March 16, 1910 in which an auditorium is clearly shown as a separate building from the administration building, so it's not too big of a jump to infer that the preliminary rendering pictured above predated the March 1910 plan. There are plenty of other elements in the initial plan that never reached fruition, such as the Persian Gardens. 

Watkin's March 1910 Plan drawing can be viewed/downloaded here:

https://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/75071

Edited March 26, 2016 by mkultra25

[hindesky]

Reddit u/NoahCharlie posted and album of 1930's pics of Houston. I will be posting the ones I think are cool.

[Highrise Tower]

I guess I'm a Rice University novice. I didn't know there was a tunnel system! Was this actually a tunnel or more for water management?

I know of the following Houston tunnels:
Downtown
St. Johns School on Claremont/Westheimer
Texas Medical Center

Rice Institute tunnel construction, view of Tunnel near Power House looking north.
1911

[Ross]

1 hour ago, Highrise Tower said:

I guess I'm a Rice University novice. I didn't know there was a tunnel system! Was this actually a tunnel or more for water management?

I know of the following Houston tunnels:
Downtown
St. Johns School on Claremont/Westheimer
Texas Medical Center

Rice Institute tunnel construction, view of Tunnel near Power House looking north.
1911

There is a huge(sort of) network of tunnels under Rice University. In the 70's they were called steam tunnels, as they distributed steam and, later, chilled water from the central plant to the various buildings. Students would explore them, but if you got caught you could be punished. These days they would probably be called utility tunnels.

Hmm, they have tours https://facilities.rice.edu/resources/tour-information

I wish this one had pictures https://sustainability.rice.edu/exploring-rices-steam-tunnels

Do a search for rice university steam tunnels

Video of the tunnels 

 

[Highrise Tower]

Flooded cottage on Rice Institute campus.
April 16, 1912.
View taken from Main Street April 16, 1912. North of Harris Bayou Bridge. Cottage on Rice Institute grounds.
G.W. Irish Photo Co.

[hindesky]

[hindesky]

"Many Rice students know that the university owns and leases some of the land in Rice Village. Lesser known, however, is the scope of Rice’s extensive and occasionally eccentric real estate holdings, which cover everything from the basics to the land that holds a women’s clothing retailer in the Rice Village, the Impeccable Pig.

Perhaps the most surprising historical holding was the decade-long ownership of the old Yankee Stadium. The capital stock of the stadium via the primary lease was sold to Rice alumnus John W. Cox ’27 in July 1955; Cox then gifted it to Rice in 1962. Although the university owned the stadium itself, the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, owned the piece of real estate it stood upon. 

When it became evident that the stadium was in dire need of repairs in 1970, the Yankees’ owners approached New York Mayor John Lindsay with a proposal to buy it and finance its renovation. Originally, Cox had estimated his gift capable of bringing Rice more than $1 million; the city of New York bought the Stadium’s lease from Rice for $2.5 million in 1972. Added to annual revenues, Rice gained a total of $3.7 million from the donation, equivalent to nearly $19 million today."

https://www.ricethresher.org/article/2023/10/rices-properties-down-to-earth-and-out-of-the-park