Putting Life in a Model T

Putting Life in a Model T

BY DAVID KAPLAN
Rice News Staff

It was a fish out of water.

The Model T Ford on display at the Heritage Society museum in Sam Houston Park downtown was sitting all by itself, beside a blank wall. Visitors barely noticed it, according to Wallace Saage, the Heritage Society’s curator of collections.

The car is now the center of attention thanks to the efforts of students in the School of Architecture’s Rice Building Workshop. Their museum installation is an attractive and educational environment that surrounds the car. It has put life back in the Model T and the world in which it traveled.

They’ve made the car the foreground of a bustling, 1920 downtown Houston street scene. The permanent installation, which the students designed and built, has “transformed” the Model T exhibit, according to Saage.

Jane Ellen Cable, director of the Heritage Society, says that museum visitors have said to her recently, “I didn’t know you had the car,” even though, Cable observes, “it’s been sitting here for 15 years.”

Nonya Grenader, a visiting critic in the School of Architecture who, along with Danny Samuels, visiting professor, taught the Rice Building Workshop course, says the architectural aim of the project was to tell the Model T’s story and show how it transformed Main Street and made a major impact on society.

The fall semester class functioned like an architectural office, Grenader says. The students did research, design development and brought in professional consultants. Additionally, they did all the construction—from wood framing to metal welding.
Samuels notes that the project was on time and on budget.

The centerpiece of the installation is a breathtaking 3-D photographic mural of Houston’s Main Street, circa 1920. Students looked at between 200 and 300 photographs at the Metropolitan Research Center before making their selection. The photograph was turned over to A&E Products, where the image was transformed into the mural format.

The class also received consulting help from Douglas Gallagher, a local firm specializing in displays and exhibits, and Michael Smith, a lighting consultant.

Along with creating a lively space for the Model T, the installation protects the car from rambunctious young visitors by way of a surrounding ramp. The exhibit is also educational: One of its walls provides a history of the Model T, based on the Rice students’ research.

Before designing the installation, students were required to investigate the invention and evolution of the Model T, and they read E.B. White’s essay “Farewell My Lovely!,” an homage to the Model T.

Each semester, the Rice Building Workshop takes on a new assignment beyond the hedges. The spring semester project will be to design and build a back porch for children at Roberts Elementary School. The porch will shelter students while they wait for their rides. Previous projects include an innovative two-story house at Project Row Houses in Houston’s Third Ward.