State-of-the-art Keck Hall maintains tradition

State-of-the-art Keck Hall maintains tradition

BY MARGOT DIMOND
Rice News Staff

Rice University’s commitment to keeping
its architectural traditions while providing the best in
educational facilities will be on display at the rededication
of Howard Keck Hall Sept. 21 at 9 a.m.

The newly renovated facility—built
in 1925 as the Chemistry Building—is now home to the
molecular biophysics group of biochemistry and cell biology
and the new Department of Bioengineering.

A Rice landmark, Keck Hall was recently
renamed (from Dell Butcher Hall) in honor of a former Rice
trustee who also was the former chairman of the Keck Foundation
that pledged $14 million toward the renovation project in
the form of a matching grant. The project is part of the “Rice: The Next Century” campaign, which will
officially kick off Sept. 23.

In 1923, when plans were announced for the
new chemistry building, the Rice Thresher predicted it would
be “the finest, largest and best equipped building
for the study of chemistry in the South and … the equal
of any in America.”

But by 1998, age and a series of renovations
had taken their toll, concealing many of the building’s
beautiful elements. Laboratory design specialists FKP Architects
were retained and instructed to preserve and enhance the
building and its special features while providing world-class
laboratories and education space. The four-story building
was completely gutted for redesign and renovation, while
the exterior brick and stone were restored. Linbeck Construction
was the contractor for the job.

Keck Hall is part of a continuum of building
design at Rice. When it was built, William Ward Watkin was
the lead architect working with Cram and Ferguson, the Boston
architectural firm that designed the original campus master
plan. Watkin, who worked on Rice’s buildings as an
employee of Cram and Ferguson, had joined the Rice faculty
as a professor of architecture.

The building marked a transition in the
architectural development of the campus, principally due
to Watkin’s more prominent role, according to Stephen
Fox, architectural historian at the School of Architecture.
Designed in the Lombard-Romanesque style, the northern Italian
architectural style favored by Watkin, the chemistry building
was much larger than other laboratory buildings of its time.
It also had a more complex shape, with sections such as
the lecture hall jutting out to catch the prevailing southeast
breeze—important in the days before air conditioning.

Some of the more interesting features of
the building are its elaborate decorations in both carved
stone and cast terra cotta and tile, with numerous symbols
referring to chemistry and alchemy.

Many Rice dignitaries of the time appear
on the building in symbolic form, including Watkin, T-square
in hand, with architectural students bowing down in due
respect, and chemistry professor Harry B. Weiser, his head
replacing the crested head of a huge winged dragon.

Other symbols on the building include circular
designs called enigmas, originally used by alchemists to
confuse the observer, and circular ceramic symbols for a
variety of metals, water, acid, alkali and other elements.
In the octagonal part of the building’s tower, the
first part of the periodic table is recorded in contemporary
symbols.

The Keck Hall renovation project was achieved
in two phases. The first phase included 88,490 square feet
of renovations for new, state-of-the-art research laboratories
for molecular biophysics and bioengineering, a nuclear magnetic
resonance suite, teaching laboratories, classrooms, departmental
and dean’s offices and clerical, faculty and ancillary
laboratory support spaces. The second phase is a new 13,740
square-foot addition to the north, designed to match the
existing building. It will house new laboratory space for
molecular biophysics and bioengineering.

“The renovation of the Old Chemistry
Building to Howard Keck Hall has preserved the charm and
beauty of the original design and at the same time provided
state-of-the-art facilities for modern biosciences research,”
said Kathleen Matthews, dean of the Wiess School of Natural
Sciences. “The preservation of this historic building
and its conversion into a 21st century laboratory facility
reflect Rice’s commitment both to its historic roots
and to its future.”