Rice University (known as Rice Institute until 1960) is one of the premier educational institutions in Texas, even though it got a lurid and litigious start.
The campus' main entrance is obscured by ancient live oaks that line Main Street, which would have shaded travelers along this historic route of the Old Spanish trail on its Alternate segment to Seguin.
From the Handbook of Texas Online, more on Rice University: (
visit link)
"RICE UNIVERSITY. Rice University, a private, independent, coeducational university in Houston, opened in 1912 as the William Marsh Rice Institute. It was chartered in 1891 by former Houston merchant William Marsh Rice with a $200,000 interest-bearing note payable to the Rice Institute upon his death. Subsequently Rice made other gifts to the institute, all payable after his death. However, when he died in 1900 in New York City, his probated will directed that his fortune should go to his lawyer. After an extensive investigation and sensational trial it was determined that Rice's butler, in league with the lawyer, had chloroformed Rice to death in order to collect upon a forged will. When the estate was settled in 1904, approximately $3 million was given to the institute as a separate capital fund added to the original endowment, which had grown to almost $3.3 million. At the time the university opened in 1912, the endowment stood at approximately $9 million, a sum that enabled all students to attend the university without paying tuition-a privilege that did not end until 1965. The original charter very generally prescribed an institution "dedicated to the advancement of literature, science, and art."
The board of trustees in Houston determined that it would be a university and in 1907 appointed mathematician and astronomer Edgar Odell Lovett of Princeton University as president with directions to plan the new institution. After worldwide traveling, discussion, and faculty recruitment, Lovett oversaw the opening in 1912, marked by an elaborate international convocation of scholars. From the beginning Lovett intended Rice to be a university "of the highest grade," and despite several decades of financial stringency following the early 1920s, the institution has striven to maintain that vision. The entering class of seventy-seven students had an international faculty of ten (Julian Huxley, for example, was the first professor of biology, and Harold Wilson from the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge was the professor of physics) and two major academic buildings (with an elaborate plan for additional buildings) by the renowned Boston architectural firm of Cram, Goodhue, and Ferguson. The Thresher, an independent student newspaper, began in 1916, and that same year the Honor Code, a cherished Rice tradition, was adopted by the student body. By 1924 the entering freshman class was limited to about 450, and the undergraduate enrollment has been carefully controlled ever since. In 1987 it was approximately 2,600. The graduate enrollment has grown gradually to about 1,300.
Under Lovett's direction Rice Institute first developed major strength in the sciences and engineering, though distinguished instruction was offered from the beginning in the humanities and architecture. The curriculum broadened, and the faculty increased greatly in size after World War II under the administration (1946–60) of physicist William V. Houston, as the name change in 1960 to Rice University acknowledged. A number of new buildings were constructed in two periods of growth, the late 1940s and the late 1950s. Graduate work, present from the beginning, was enlarged. In 1987 advanced degrees were offered in more than thirty fields. Moral, social, and economic imperatives drove the university successfully to seek legal authority in 1964 to break the founder's charter in two regards: permission to admit students without regard to race and to charge a modest tuition. Further expansion, especially in the humanities and social sciences, came in the 1960s and 1970s during the administrations of chemists Kenneth S. Pitzer (1961–68) and Norman Hackerman (1970–85). In 1961 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration located the Manned Space Flight Center (now the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Centerqv) on land made available by Rice, and in 1962 the university established the nation's first department of space science. The Journal of Southern History has been published at Rice since 1959; Studies in English Literature was founded at Rice in 1961; and the Papers of Jefferson Davis project has been headquartered at Rice since 1963. In July 1985 Rice University Studies (formerly Rice Institute Pamphlet, begun in 1915) became Rice University Press. The Shepherd School of Music and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Administration were added in 1973 and 1976 respectively.
In July 1985 theologian George E. Rupp of Harvard Divinity School became Rice's fifth president. As he took over the university, the faculty numbered approximately 420, with slightly fewer than 4,000 students. The campus has forty architecturally consistent buildings grouped in quadrangles under graceful live oak trees on a campus of 300 acres in the heart of Houston. The endowment in 1987 stood at more than $750 million, the largest of any private university in the South. The small undergraduate student body is among the nation's most select, with average SAT scores of over 1,300 and one of the highest percentages of National Merit Scholarship winners. The student body, formerly mostly from Texas, now is predominantly non-Texan, and the relatively low tuition makes possible an economically diverse student population; yet what most shapes the character of Rice is the unusual academic talent of its students. Almost paradoxically, Rice, with its 73,000-seat stadium, continued as a charter member of the Southwest Conference until this athletic union ended. No fraternities or sororities are allowed; all undergraduates are assigned to one of eight residential colleges (the system was established in 1957) around whose recreational, cultural, educational, and governmental activities student life revolves. In 1993 Malcolm Gillis, an economist and dean from Duke University, became the sixth president.
Rice University maintains a variety of research facilities and laboratories. The Fondren Libraryqv contains more than 1.3 million volumes and 1.6 million microforms and subscribes to approximately 11,000 serial titles. It is a depository for United States government documents and patents, and is a university affiliate for census data. Rare books, manuscripts, and the university archives are housed in the library's Woodson Research Center. The library is particularly strong in Texas materials, Confederate imprints, and eighteenth-century English drama, and holds the papers and library of Sir Julian Huxley. Two major scientific collections are the Anderson Collection on the History of Aeronautics and the Johnson Space Center History Archives. The university's central computing facility is the Institute for Computer Services and Applications. There are a number of other computing facilities located elsewhere across the campus. Rice is also associated with the Houston Area Research Center, a consortium supported by Rice, the University of Texas, Texas A&M University, and the University of Houston. A number of interdisciplinary research institutes and centers are located on the Rice campus, including the Rice Quantum Institute, the Rice Engineering Design and Development Institute, and the Computer and Information Technology Institute. The Rice Center for Community Design and Research, housed off campus, is involved with urban planning. The Office of Continuing Studies offers a wide variety of noncredit enrichment and technical short courses to thousands of Houstonians annually. In 1990 Rice hosted the annual G-7 economic conference of the United States, Canada, Japan, and Western European countries. Rice's goal has been to combine the teaching emphasis of a liberal arts college with the scholarship of a research university. In 1991 Rice was ranked first among the nation's top 100 schools as a "best buy" in education. Rice University had 462 faculty members and 4,268 students for the 1992–93 regular term and 723 in the 1992 summer session.
by John B. Boles"
The route of the Old Spanish Trail from Orange TX to Houston was designated the US 90 in 1926 when the Auto Trails were reclassified a federal highways and assigned numbers.
Once the US 90/OST entered Houston, it split into two routes: one (US 90) that went through downtown, and another (US 90 Alt) that bypassed downtown to the southwest.
The direct US 90 route through Houston was known also by the following street names (east to west) to the town of Katy:
McCarty Street (AKA Beaumont Hwy)
Wayside Street (AKA Beaumont Hwy)
Navigation Blvd
Washington Street
Katy Highway
In Houston, the US 90 Alt was known alternatively by these street names:
Old Spanish Trail
Main Street/South Main Street
The US 90 Alt part of the old OST winds though downtown to south Houston, and leaves town at the junction with the US 59. The 90 Alt continues west, south of the main US 90 route towards San Antonio, passing through six Texas counties to its terminus at the town of Seguin.
See here: (
visit link) for more on this part of the OST through South Texas.
"As the Old Spanish Trail Highway progressed from Houston to San Antonio the route never strayed too far from the main Southern Pacific railroad tracks. This was because a right of way was already established. Wagons and early cars had being following the line for years. Very significantly, it also allowed for the easy transportation of road materials and equipment. Most highways were still using Macadam construction, requiring successive layers of rocks of descending size with a top layer of gravel. Enormous quantities of rock were required. Early trucks could not carry heavy loads over great distances in large part due to lagging tire technology and the poor state of the roads themselves. However, they were well suited for short haul. They were loaded from trains at rail sidings along the route and in this way the road made good progress through the wealthier and more populated counties. Without a hard surface, the growing number of vehicles and the increasingly heavy trucks faced many problems along the way. Not all of these were accidental. For some reason, even in the height of summer, a wet spot on the road between Weimer and Schulenburg just would not go away. Drivers familiar with the road would gun their engines in an effort to get across, but frequently found themselves stuck yet again. A local farmer, who just happened to be nearby with a team of horses, was more than willing to tow them out for a mere $5.00. This at a time when a gallon of gas cost 25 cents. The OST did deviate from the railroads if counties along the way offered greater participation. Gonzales County did just that and so the OST swung south between Flatonia and Seguin, avoiding Luling at the southern tip of Caldwell County. Nearby Shiner, in Lavaca County, with its famous brewery, was not on the OST directly but its brew master, Kosmos Spoetzl, well known for marketing his beer personally from the back of a Ford Model T certainly took advantage of the improved road. Being near the new main highway brought an additional advantage to railroad access."
As a proud graduate of the University of Texas, and despite the fact that it's been 23 years (as of 2017), I'm still bitter. So --
GO LONGHORNS! BEAT THE HELL OUTTA RICE! ]:>