Fondren Library exhibit chronicles the construction of Rice’s first buildings

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

A new exhibit at Fondren Library displays photos, documents and artifacts from the earliest days of what was then referred to as the Rice Institute. The display, titled “Constructing the Rice Institute: 1910-1914,” will be of particular interest to students of Rice’s origins — and history buffs in general.

		A new exhibit at Fondren Library displays photos, documents and artifacts from the earliest days of what was then referred to as the Rice Institute.

One photo, dated March 2, 1911, shows many of the key figures of the university’s founding — Edgar Odell Lovett, Capt. James Baker, Will Rice and William Ward Watkin — helping to lay the cornerstone of the Administration Building, today’s Lovett Hall. Another, from Feb. 4, 1912, depicts Watkin, the architect responsible for Rice’s distinctive style, looking over the residence halls as they begin to take shape.

“Mary Bixby and I had a great time putting this exhibit together,” said Lee Pecht, head of special collections at Fondren Library. “We’re delighted to display these materials that document Rice’s history and how it first sprouted out of the empty landscape.”

The exhibit, located in two display cases along the eastern wall of the main reading room (formally known as the Hobby Information Concourse), also includes period tools, like hammers, files, wrenches and nails — all suitably rusted with age. At the bottom of one case is an intriguing letter from Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson, the architecture firm that sent Watkin to Houston, approving payment for his salary and traveling expenses. “We do not think it advisable at present to open an office bank account in Houston,” the letter says, preferring that Watkin “handle the finances personally.”

But the photos will probably have the most meaning to members of the Rice community today. Alumni who sat through 8 a.m. lectures in the Physics Building’s main auditorium will enjoy seeing a Jan. 8, 1914, picture of workmen pouring concrete to form the ramp that would become the room’s seating section, Pecht said. And all Rice students, past and present, will get a kick out the Jan. 25, 1912, photograph of the setting of the Sallyport arch.

Perhaps the most iconic of the photos shows Lovett Hall, almost completed, rising out of the empty prairie on Feb. 10, 1913. No other building is visible, just mud puddles in the foreground and an overcast sky.

The exhibit is part of a series that will culminate with a display on the official opening of Rice University, which will coincide with the celebration of the university’s centennial in the fall of 2012. The current exhibit will be on display through next spring.