You might check out Rice University - their nickname is the Owls. Also the infamous University of Texas tower. It was designed by a Rice architect and includes owl faces when viewed from oblique angles, as in the Big Ben photo you posted. Moreover, there is a miniature Texas Tower on the Rice campus. Apparently a scale model from before the tower was built, I don’t know.
You might check out Rice University - their nickname is the Owls. Also the infamous University of Texas tower.
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I can’t take credit for the pix, ichabod, that was all on our dear FRiend, Cats Pajamsa!
I’ve seen those OWL Tower pix before - quite an effect!
HOWEVER that is true about Rice U and its OWL connections.
I had not thought about the origins of Rice U in a while. I have a close relative who attended there. The average Rice fan, I suppose, only thinks of the owl in its more benign aspects of “Wisdom” etc. And certainly that symbol DOES contain that quality. You have made me curious, so into the bunny hole I go seeking the skullduggery of those Wiley Rascally Wabbits.....and OWLs!!
Mr. Rice, the founder, apparently was an elitist, and in his will he specified that no black people could attend. Married women were also frowned on. They relaxed that during WWII. After he died, they set about breaking that will and were successful... as well they should be! [This story is from what my relative told me - not from their web site!]
Their web site:
http://www.rice.edu
The Rice shield has 3 owls.
“ Rice Academic Seal and Logo Rice Academic Seal
The academic seal of Rice University was designed in 1912 by Mr. Pierre de Chaignon la Rose of Cambridge, Massachusetts,*** who combined the main elements of the arms of sixteen prominent families bearing the names “Rice” or “Houston.” Owls of Athena-symbolic of wisdom-were chosen for the charges. The Athenian owls on the Rice seal were patterned after a design found on a small, silver tetradrachmenon coin dating from the middle of the fifth century B.C. And because Rice University was dedicated by its founder to the advancement of “letters, science, and art,” these words also were incorporated into the seal.”
http://explore.rice.edu/uploadedImages/Explore/Welcome_to_Rice/riceacademicseal1.jpg
Mr. Rice appears to have been an equal opportunity “Free Trader” during the Late Unpleasantness Between the States:
Rice Colors: Blue and Gray
“In 1912, Rice’s first president, Edgar Odell Lovett****, chose as the school colors “a blue still deeper than the Oxford blue” and “the Confederate gray, enlivened by a tinge of lavender.” It has been suggested that blue and gray were chosen in recognition of the fact that Rice’s founder amassed much of the fortune that formed the initial endowment of the Rice Institute by trading with both the North and the South during the Civil War.”
William Marsh Rice
On May 18, 1891, Massachusetts-born businessman William Marsh Rice chartered the William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Science, and Art as a gift to the city of Houston, where he made his fortune. The terms of the charter required that work on the new institute would begin only after Rice’s death.”
Mascot - Owl
Rice Mascot: Owl
When athletic activities began at the Rice Institute in 1912, the teams adopted as their mascot the owl from the Rice seal. Over the years, Rice’s various mascots have included students dressed in owl costumes, live Great Horned Owls, and large owl statues of fiberglass and of canvas, the latter being particularly famous in Rice lore (see below).
Mascot Name: “Sammy”
“An early symbol of Rice’s athletic teams was large canvas owl, a tempting target for the Institute’s rivals. In 1917, when students from Southwest Conference football rival Texas A&M kidnapped the owl, Rice students pooled their resources and hired a private detective to go to College Station to find the missing mascot. When the detective, having recovered the owl, sent a coded telegram to Houston that read “Sammy is fairly well and would like to see his parents at eleven o’clock,” the Rice mascot had a name.”
The MOB - Rice University’s Marching Owl Band
***Mr Rose:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1941/3/18/faculty-profile-pthis-last-year-was/
Was apparently a Harvard alum and on faculty
“...Pierre la Rose (some say it was originally Peter Ross) had a vocation—heraldry. His ability and knowledge were of the first order, and his consequent reputation was international. He made the heraldic designs for the Houses, for the Tercentenary, for Radcliffe and Yale and Princeton buildings. He was a devout Roman Catholic and an authority on ecclesiastical emblazonings. He was proud of an ancient French lineage, and his walls were hung with old family portraits....”
Also a bachelor.
From WIKI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_de_Chaignon_la_Rose
Pierre de Chaignon la Rose was born on April 23, 1871 in New York City, New York.[1] His father was an A. F. de Chaignon la Rose, and his mother Katharine Kappus von Pichlstein.[1] It was rumored by some at Harvard, however, that the French surname was merely a pretense, and that his name was originally Peter Ross.[2]
La Rose studied at Exeter Academy and subsequently Harvard University, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1895.[1][2] He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, supposedly “without ever taking a single lecture-note”.[2] He also served as editor of the Harvard Monthly, and was a member of Hasty Pudding and Signet.[2] His roommate at Harvard was Daniel Gregory Mason, who described him in the following terms:
The official seal of Saint Anselm College incorporates La Rose’s design
Of all my friends he had the surest nose for the best, whether in letters, music, the graphic arts, or the more general arts of life ... His style in college essays and stories was fairly Jamesian. He could draw exquisite book-plates. As for his piano-playing, I can see him yet at our upright, stocky but erect in shirt-sleeves and red hair ...[3]
He taught at Harvard in the English department for seven years following his graduation, resigning his teaching post in 1902.[1][4] By 1915, La Rose would describe his occupation as a “man of letters”, busying himself with critical literary work and graphic design while making trips to Europe, Mexico, and Turkey.[1]
A fervent Catholic, La Rose was an expert on ecclesiastical heraldry,[2] and designed the coats of arms of many American Catholic prelates.[5] He also designed arms for institutions both Catholic and secular, including The Catholic University of America[6], Saint Anselm College and Rice University.[7] For example, he designed the seals of all the graduate schools at Harvard University and served on its Committee on Arms, Seal, and Diplomas, while also designing armorial bearings for Princeton, Yale, and Radcliffe College.[2][8]
He was a friend of historian George Santayana.
****
Edgar Odell Lovett (April 14, 1871 – August 13, 1957) was an American educator and education administrator.
He was the first president of Rice Institute (now Rice University) in Houston, Texas. Lovett was RECOMMENDED TO THE POST BY WOODROW WILSON, then president of Princeton University.
[BOOMlette!! I found out more than you wanted to know, and certainly more than I wanted to know too! LOL! But connection to the globalists in my book, is confirmed. Now I gotta scramble to catch up again!]
