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Half Day in Houston: Uncover Secrets at Rice University

Modified: Jan 4, 2021 by Jill Jarvis · This post may contain affiliate links · This blog generates income via ads · #sponsoredpost · Leave a Comment

This Half Day adventure is one of my very favorites! Pack up your explorers and start uncovering secrets at Rice University ! Find goofy carvings, a marble wall that makes a croaking sound, whispering niches, angry dolphins and so much more.

Find details and the walking map below.

Free parking is available at Hermann Park Parking Lot A . You can cross Fannin and Main, at the METRORail station, and access Gate 1 at Rice University. Just be sure (no matter where you park) that no valuables are in your car because you will be leaving it for a few hours.

Lot A can get full on nice days and weekends, so you can either park in another Hermann Park lot (for free) or pay to park in the Rice Visitor Lots.

To start, look up the Rice University Map   or print out my marked-up map HERE ! There is a lot to see at Rice, but this tour focuses on a small section near Lovette Hall. (Be watching for more Half Day Adventures that explore Rice!)

Go any day and at any time because our whole adventure is outside the amazing buildings. If you go at 8:00am on a school day, you'll probably wrap up about the time the campus is waking up.

Start your adventure by walking (or pushing the stroller) up the tree lined walking path from Gate 1 (by the Hermann Park MetroRail Station). This picture perfect street brings you closer, step by step, to Lovette Hall.

Once you reach Lovette Hall, your secret finding mission begins. Start through the big arch and look up!

Walk through this archway and be amazed at the beauty of this campus. Grand buildings surround you, with Herzstein Hall and MD Anderson Hall are to the right, Fondren Library is straight ahead and Sewall Hall and Rayzor Hall are to the left. Everywhere you look there are owls, carvings and plaques.... and it makes you wonder just how many secrets and inside jokes are hidden around Rice University .

With your back to Lovett Hall, turn right and walk by Herzstein Hall. Here you need to pay close attention to the door handles and walls.

The door handles are... can you guess? Angry dolphins. I'm serious. That's what it says HERE .

Keep walking straight (still to the right of Lovett Hall) and locate the M.D. Anderson Hall (as marked on the map) or Architecture Building (as marked on this side of the building).

Look right next to the "Architecture" sign for one of the coolest things in Houston (for those of us that love quirky things). The little dots around the doorway make noise if you run your thumb through them!

Listen to the Frog Croak below! (And yes, "frog croak" is probably the nicest way to describe the sound.)

5. William Marsh Rice Statue

From this awesome marble trick, walk to the middle of the quad to find the founder and tomb of William Marsh Rice. Rice left his fortune to build Rice University... but it was nearly stolen after his murder. Learn about the scandal  HERE .

Also, on the back of the chair of the statue, apparently you can see a style of owl that is no where else on campus.

From the statue, there is one more carving you really should see... just beyond the quad.

If you walk towards Main Street and Hermann Park (or left if your back is the Lovett Hall), you can find Will Rice College. Along the building you can find a funny set of sculptures... including one of a student writing home to ask for money!

This really is just the start of what there is to find at Rice University. So wrap up your tour for the day and make plans to come back... or look at THIS walking tour and get to more exploring!

More Half Day in Houston

About Jill Jarvis

Jill Jarvis is the owner of JillBJarvis.com, a BigKidSmallCity.com and Things to Do in Houston, with Kids, blog!

She is the mom of five and started the website years ago... when she was tired of constantly cleaning up the same mess in the family room.

Another mom showed her that you could just go do fun things in Houston, without hours of planning.

This inspired the blog and changed everything about how she enjoyed life in Houston, with kids!

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Rice University Trail

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Rice University Trail - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

• (0.42 mi) Houston Marriott Medical Center/Museum District
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Student-Led Tours

Join us for a tour of Rice University! Learn more about our academics, traditions and community on this one-hour tour led by a current student. Tours are offered Monday and Friday at 9 a.m., Monday through Friday at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., and Saturdays at 10:00 a.m.  Before coming to campus for your tour, we recommend that you attend a virtual information session to learn more about Rice and our offerings. You may sign up for either a  live  or  recorded  session, and while you're there be sure to check out our other  virtual opportunities . Can't make a student-led tour? With the help of our self-guided tour map and our virtual experience, come see Rice for yourself and interact with campus through informational videos. No pre-registration required – just come to the Office of Admission between 8:30 a.m. - 12 p.m. or 1 - 5 p.m., Monday - Friday to self-register and pick up a map. Visit our website for directions and parking information. In order to welcome visitors to campus, the following guidelines  are in place for our student-led tours, as we want to ensure the safety of all of our prospective students and their guests.

713-348-7423

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CiteSeeing: A Walking Tour of Rice University

OffCite invites short essays, reviews, and observations on specific moments and places. Interested in contributing your own? Let us know .

I recently completed 10 years of work at Rice University. I’m marking the occasion by sharing 10 favorite spots on the campus as a walking tour. It starts at the west end where the parking is cheap.

1. Rice Stadium 1950, McGinty Architects

For most of my time at Rice, I have bicycled to campus. When I have had to park, I use the $1 lot on the west side of the stadium. You insert your credit card in the machine at the entrance and the robotic arm lifts. One dollar covers the day. The hike in to my office takes 15 minutes and is quite beautiful. I love the simple and slender columns of the stadium that Jack McGinty discussed in detail on this blog. A sidewalk winds along the stadium’s north wall under a grove of elm trees with knotty roots popping up here and there like a hundred bruised knees. Graduate students, construction workers, and custodial crews stream through. Together we make a strangely intimate space next to a gigantically beautiful building.

2. Business School, Playing Fields, and Recreation Center Janice Suber and Robert McNair Hall, 2002, Robert A.M. Stern Architects; Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center, 2009, Lake|Flato

Though the detailed brick and stone work of the business school fits in with the older parts of campus, the building intimidates me. It is so huge. On the other hand, maybe it is the suited students with their crisp haircuts, not the building, that intimidate me. I prefer walking on the dirt path across the street next to the playing field. Sometimes a tuba player practices there. In the summer, soccer coaches bark at children who are impossibly eager about running sprints in the extreme heat. The recreation center at the end of the playing fields, designed by Lake|Flato, frames a nice space with three huge trees. I eat sandwiches here before I (on rare occasion) exercise. All the bodies inside, some gyrating, some in languid repose, have created a little corporeal moment --- exposed sweating flesh! --- in an otherwise cerebral place. On cold days, in the morning, the swimming pool exhales a thick mist, which, along with the traditionalist business school and the fields, reminds me of a walk I once took in Oxfordshire, England.

3. M.D. Anderson Biological Laboratories 1958, Pierce and Pierce

When the sun is in just the right position, the stairwells behind the St. Joe brick brises-soleil are transcendently beautiful --- a union of purush and prakriti. The glory of these mid-century modern interpretations of the original Rice master plan by Ralph Adams Cram! One architect pointed out to me that this is how sustainability was done in the 1950s. No gizmos. No parametrics. No polymers.

4. Physics, Brockman Hall 2011, KieranTimberlake Associates, Jackson & Ryan Architects, Perkins+Will, and the Office of James Burnett

High-tech, 21st-century sustainability can be great too. When this building first broke ground, I was troubled by the siting. Why cram a huge new structure in what was a great courtyard? But the architects pulled off a very difficult challenge with style. High-tech labs where lasers are used to cool and still atoms at close to absolute zero are in the basement. Offices are above. And the ground plane is a shaded patio with a water feature. I like the concrete columns that show the wood grain from the forms. The pinwheel pattern in the windows animates the night. The view from the observatory up top is strange and new. You see all the funny turrets at Rice, the campanile, the complex rooflines of Southampton and Boulevard Oaks, and the great arc of highrises made by our polynuclear complex of the Texas Medical Center, Downtown, Greenway Plaza, and Uptown.

5. Rice School of Architecture, M.D. Anderson Hall 1947, Staub + Rather, William Ward Watkin Addition, 1981, James Stirling, Michael Wilford + Associates with Ambrose/McEnany

I’ve likely spent most of my waking hours for the last five years in this building and am grateful it’s so terrific. My cubicle is in a double-height room with a tall window directly overlooking the statue of Rice's founder. I see rabbits hopping between the bushes and tour groups trudging along through while I work. Every day, it seems, I hear someone rubbing a particular spot on the building that makes a sound like a frog croaking. That spot is outside but quite close to my desk. I don't know what to make of the accompanying lore about students upset about the filled-in marsh areas. Architecture tours can make people sleepy, and the frog sound seems like an excuse to break the monotony by touching the building. I am in favor of touching buildings, but I want to go out and explain to them how special this one is. The old portion where I sit was once the English Department. (I take solace from that, cosmic destiny, because my degrees are in literature and I often feel out of place.) The building became the exclusive home of the Rice School of Architecture in the 1980s. The addition to the west side of the building was by one of the great architects of the second half of the 20th century, James Stirling. He made all kinds of quirky “quotations” from architecture history, like a conical spire and an oddly symmetrical column under an asymmetrical circular window. More importantly, the addition responds to its context, shapes new spaces, fosters communication in its hallways, and animates the campus with big windows that encourage a voyeuristic gaze at night when the architects are still working while everyone else plays or sleeps. The acoustics are terrible, the heating and air-conditioning are hugely inefficient, the exhaust from the workshop noxious --- but, in recent years, those failings are being addressed one by one. A postmodern building worthy of admiration and study. You are welcome to come visit me. The halls inside are covered with renderings and plans by faculty and students.

6. Duncan Hall 1996, John Outram and Kendall/Heaton Associates

Here is the wit of postmodernism at its most bewildering! Different mythological systems inform each quadrant of the building and come together in an epic confabulation inside on the ceiling mural. Why do I list the building as one of my favorites? Well, I admire how far gone it is, how extreme it is in its bizarreness.

7. Lovett Hall 1912, Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson

I genuflect to the mothership. All the great architects who have worked on this campus have, in some way, tried to interpret the precedents set by this building, whether it is the eclectic style, the material and detailing, the scale, or how it shapes space. (If you arrive by light rail, you can start the tour here.)

8. Humanities Building 2000, Alan Greenberg

This building looks like it has been here forever even though it is rather new because the architect is an unabashed traditionalist. He’s not quoting history. He’s doing his best to deploy the old orders of architecture in contemporary times. I worked here for five years too, and it was a great pleasure. My office had a huge Palladian window looking at a colonnade of oak trees. I often saw red-headed woodpeckers in the branches. (I spent the night inside once with my pregnant wife and a dozen faculty while Hurricane Rita barreled down on Houston.) Like the architecture and recreation buildings, this one shapes a courtyard with a magnificent oak tree in the center. There was once a bench hung from a branch and it was a site of frequent displays of affection.

9. Raymond and Susan Brochstein Pavilion 2008, Thomas Phifer & Partners

At the center of campus is this coffee house in a glass and steel box that breaks from the tyranny of St. Joe brick. In this sense, it is a garden "folly." I don't typically eat inside I'm so taken by the landscaping by the Office of James Burnett. A grove of closely planted elm trees instantly transformed what was dead space behind the library. The bicycle racks are surely the most beautiful parking spots in all of Houston. There's a good chance you will see Stephen Fox, the esteemed architectural historian who wrote this review of the pavilion .

10. Digital Media Center at Herring Hall 1984, Cesar Pelli and Associates

This barrel-vaulted room is a pleasure to spend a few hours in while scanning old photographs of Houston. At least, that’s why I often end up here. The designers I am around are so fiercely oriented against postmodernism that they have a hard time enjoying some of the good buildings that were built in the 1970s and '80s. The siting of the building, the courtyard, the patterning of the brick, the quality of light inside, and this big room are worthy of appreciation.

More >>> One Hundred Years of Rice: Contemporary Responses to Tradition  by Mark Cottle and Sabir Khan, Cite 86; read all CiteSeeing posts.

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The Rice Welcome Center regrets that we are at capacity for elementary and middle school group tours for the 2024 spring semester, and so are unable to accommodate any new requests. We appreciate your interest in visiting the campus, and suggest you check back in August of 2024 to request tour dates for fall 2024 or spring 2025.

Rice University Walking Tour

Quads, courts & axes.

Brought to you by the ArCH Walking/Bicycle Tours

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Rice University and Rice School of Architecture both celebrate their Centennial in 2012. A treasure trove of great architecture, the timeless campus features designs by Cram, Goodhue, & Ferguson; John Staub; William Ward Watkin; Michael Graves; Kieren Timberlake; Ricardo Bofill; Cesar Pelli; Lake/Flato Architects; and many other local and internationally renowned architects. Also on the tour are large scale art works by James Turrell and Michael Heizer. From Lovett Hall to Brochstein Pavilion, this tour will look at some of the more unique, hidden, important and historical features of Rice University's Campus. In addition to the architecture we will explore the context surrounding each building, the quads, courts and axes, how these elements work together to shape collegiate space. 



Tour meets on the front lawn of Lovett Hall, building 48 on the Rice University map, 6100 Main. 
Recommended parking in Rice University Visitor Parking Lot L or Founder's Court Visitor's Lot. Credit card is required to access parking.








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