The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 36, No. 56, Ed. 1 Saturday, May 7, 1949 Page: 6 of 8
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THE THRESHER
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Thsse two columns outside the south entrance to Lovett Hall illustrate
ihe Lombard type architecture used extensively on the Rice campus.
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Ancient Italian City Chosen
As Guide for Unusual Style
... three miles outside the city ..
sometimes water covers the site..
Wrote Dr. Lovett to Architects
"We have, three miles outside the city of Houston, Texas,
a tract of three hundred acres; it is fifty feet above sea level
and fifty miles from the coast; sometimes water covers the site,
as the fall is only one foot per mile to the sea. It is bare
prairie land, with a few scrub oaks in one corner. We have
a fund of ten million dollars,
some of which can be used for
the first buildings. We have
a Board of Trustees and a President
—myself—and we would like you to
be our architect." With these words
the firm of Sram and Ferguson of
New York and Boston, were com-
missioned by Doctor Lovett, now
president-emeritus, to design the
Rice Institute. .
The restrictions placed upon this
firm of architects .in planning the
campus were probably as few as
any before applied in a similar situ-
ation; indeed, they were merely to
submit their sketches of proposed
designs for the approval or rejectoin
by the Board of Trustees. It would
have been natural for these archi-
tects to follow one of the two styles
for institutions of higher education
which they had done so successfully
in America; they should have been
expected to use either their "Colleg-
iate Gothic," which had been so ef-
fective on the Princeton campus, or
their Georgian, which had worked
out so beautifully at Sweetbriar.
However, the English Gothic type
of Princeton seemed hardly suitable
for buildings that were to rise out
of the prairie; and the charming
Georgian they felt so appropos for
the South seemed out of place in
this veritable swampland, which
lacked the traditions and grace of
landscape needed to compliment this
delicate type. In tryinjf to find a
style that would reflect the back-
ground of Texas and that would be
appropriate to the climate of the
site, it naturally occurred to the de-
signers to use a Spanish type mis-
sion architecture; however, the
Board of Trustees of the Institute
were strongly opposed to this, ob-
jecting to the use of a foftn so
closely associated with a country
which once ruled their state. Thus
the field of possible choices of a
type of design for the new college
was quickly harrowing.
One of the lines of influence left
to follow was that of the Italian
Renaissance, and hence the first
sketches were done along the man-
ner of the architecture found in
Venice; indeed, the first sketches
were in the vein of the giddier side
of the Venetian Renaissance Archi-
tecture. This soon proved to be en-
tirely inadequate, making the prob-
lem even more difficult. Mr. Cram
felt that they had found the correct
part of Europe from which to draw
their forms, but felt that they had
chosen the wrong period of Archi-
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tectural History from which to draw
their inspiration. It was his opinion
that colleges were outgrowths of the
religious cloisters, hence being es-
sentially religious institutions, and
therefore making use of such non-
religious style as that of the Italian
Renaissance entirely unfitting. It
was his idea to use Italian forms,
treating them as thought the Gothic
style had never entered Italy. This
could have meant the Byzantine
style, taking Constantinople as the
chief source of inspiration. But a
strict following of this style seemed
as impractical as some of the prev-
iously discarded ideas, and they
turned instead to the more practical
forms found in the pre-Gothic Ro-
manesque, city of Ravenna nad the
cities of Bologna, Milan and that
section of the Adriatic. As to why
this particular section should offer
a kind of architecture that would,
basically, fit into the designer's
ideas and ideals for college build-
ings, can be brought out only
through a brief resume of the his-
tory of the city itself; i.e., Ravenna.
The City of Ravenna
Ravenna owes its great historical
importance in the past to its po-
sition in a plain, formed and con-
tinually extended by the deposits
brought down by a number of small
and rapid streams from the neigh-
boring Apennines.
It was in 402 that Honorius, for
strategical reasons, removed his
court from Constantinople to Ra-
venna with ever hope of making it
the most important port on the
Adriatic. But the sea refused1 to be
broken to the will of man, and today
the great seaport—the Venice of
the Romans—is purported to be un-
healthy, and has been left dry by a
sea which has rteired six miles from
the harbour where once rode the
navies of Imperial Rome.
The history of Ravenna it one of
changing governments and shifting
influences; Christianity came early
to the city, and as the metropolis of
the Greek Monarchs it became more
Byzantine than Bizantium itself.
For a short while .the citv was un-
der the domination of a semi-bar-
baric people, but eventuallv came
into the realm of papal power; she
shook off the bonds of mitered rule
and was self-governing for a period
but through Frederick II she was
aeain consigned to the rule of the
Pope. This phase of Ravenna's de-
(Continued on Page 7)
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The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 36, No. 56, Ed. 1 Saturday, May 7, 1949, newspaper, May 7, 1949; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth230811/m1/6/?rotate=90: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.