Dell Butcher Hall
Present-day Butcher Hall is the second building on the Rice campus to have born that name — the building known today as Keck Hall was once Butcher Hall, and the name was “moved” and conferred on this newer building when the older one was renovated and renamed. The new building has an unusual outdoor classroom on its roof. Inside, etched into the glass of the stairwell just off the building’s entry lobby, you’ll see enlarged images of microscopic buckytubes, a form of buckminsterfullerene or buckyballs, which was discovered at Rice. If you look closely at the etched glass, you will find images of the faces of the two Rice professors who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery, Professor Emeritus Bob Curl ’54 and the late Rick Smalley.
What’s there: Offices and labs associated with the Smalley-Curl Institute
Named for: E. Dell Butcher ’34, who was president of American Commercial Lines, a Rice trustee and chair of the Rice Board of Governors in 1981 and 1982
Built: 1997, Antoine Predock and Brooks Coronado Associates
Rice Map No. 18