Rice University exists because of a Houston merchant's fortune and a notorious 1900 murder plot that nearly swallowed it. William Marsh Rice chartered his institute in 1891, and after his estate was finally settled, the Rice Institute opened in 1912 with 59 students and four buildings on the open prairie. Its architects set a Mediterranean-Byzantine style of patterned brick and stone that the campus still follows. This walk begins across Main Street at an early student center, passes through the Sallyport onto the Academic Quad, and heads west past the faculty club and a James Turrell light installation to the stadium where President Kennedy promised the Moon.
About this site
Rice University is a private college or university in Houston, Harris County. It is one of 22 degree-granting colleges and universities TexasRoam maps in Harris County.
The site sits at 29.7161, -95.3969 near Houston. The nearest cataloged historic site is Autry House (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include First Presbyterian Church of Houston, Rice University, and Michael E. DeBakey Library and Museum.
Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
History
Rice University exists because of cotton and real-estate merchant William Marsh Rice, who in 1891 chartered a tuition-free institute in Houston to be funded by his estate after his death. Rice was murdered in New York in 1900 in a plot by his lawyer Albert Patrick and his valet, and the forged will that would have diverted his fortune was exposed with the help of his Houston attorney, Captain James A. Baker, freeing some $4.6 million for the school. Trustees chose Princeton mathematician Edgar Odell Lovett as first president, and after touring dozens of universities worldwide he set out to build an institution "of the highest grade." The William Marsh Rice Institute opened on September 23, 1912, with 59 students, men and women alike, in the ornate Administration Building now called Lovett Hall. The residential college system Lovett had envisioned was adopted in 1958, and in 1960 the school became William Marsh Rice University. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy delivered his moonshot speech at Rice Stadium. Because the founding charter restricted admission to white students and barred tuition, trustees went to court in 1963; Raymond Johnson became the first Black student that year, the charter was amended in 1964, and tuition was introduced in 1965. Today Rice is a selective research university of roughly 8,500 students known for its Byzantine-inspired brick-and-stone architecture, residential colleges, the Baker Institute for Public Policy, and traditions like Beer Bike.
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