est. 2002
parking lot
It all started with a $15 million donation to the university in 1998.
The money was donated by the Marian and Speros Martel Foundation, a long-standing benefactor of Rice. Earmarked to implement the Rice: The Next Century initiative, part of the donation was set aside to build a new residential college. Such an undertaking would have made the foundation’s founders, late Houston businessman Speros Martel and his wife Marian, proud.
​
During the 1940s, the Martels lived only a short distance away from Rice in the Warwick (now the Hotel ZaZa), located just north of campus on Main Street. Although they did not have any children, the couple bestowed their love of learning on their adopted children, the students of the Rice Institute.
meet speros and marian martel
Martel shakes hands with former Rice president Dr. Norman Hackerman as Ralph O'Connor and Karen George smile for the camera.
As the first Rice Institute students matriculated in 1912, a young Speros Martel left his home in Athens, Greece to study in France. Martel's adventuresome spirit soon got the best of him, and he enlisted as a cabin boy on a ship bound for New York. He survived in his new country by working as a Wall Street messenger and selling newspapers and flowers on the street until he saved enough money to open a restaurant in Buffalo, New York.
​
During World War I, Martel moved to Camp Logan in Houston and became a waiter at the Rice Hotel, owned first by William Marsh Rice and then by the Rice Institute after the war. Martel again opened a restaurant of his own a block away from the Rice Hotel and later built other restaurants along Main Street.
​
Although Martel had little formal education, he learned to speak five languages through his travels. His entrepreneurial skills allowed him to become a successful businessman, investing in land, stocks and bonds. He eventually made friends with fellow Houston businessmen George R. Brown and Jesse H. Jones, and often attended Rice football games with Jones.
In 1932, Martel married Marian Fox Twyman, daughter of another prominent Houston businessman, Henry Fox Sr. During the 1940s, the Martels lived only a short distance away from Rice in the Warwick (now the Hotel ZaZa), located just north of campus on Main Street.
Although they did not have any children, the couple bestowed their love on their adopted children, the students of the Rice Institute. When Marian Martel died in 1956, her will endowed four chairs to the university in honor of each of her parents; her first husband, William Gaines Twyman; and her sister, Gladys Louise Fox.
creating martel
The literal and figurative foundations of the new college were laid in 2000. The official groundbreaking took place on April 10, 2000, and was attended by newly instated Martel Masters Joan and Arthur Few. Masters at Baker College from 1994 to 1999, the Fews were chosen to give the newest college a leg up. Attention soon turned to the most important aspect of a residential college – the students. Applications for Martel’s founding committee went out in Sept. 2000, and two students from each existing college were selected.
​
“We are looking for people who are able to see the possibilities this is a new college and a new millennium and people with leadership, because they have to write a constitution, recruit other members and new associates,” Arthur Few said in a Sept. 2000 interview with The Thresher. The first students accepted as new Martel members had to live off campus during the fall 2001 semester until the completion of construction, scheduled for the beginning of 2002. Excitement mounted as Martelians anticipated the completion of their brand-new building. Then disaster struck. In June, Tropical Storm Allison dumped 28 inches of rain on the Houston area, causing an estimated $4.88 billion of damage. The heavy flooding delayed Martel’s construction schedule by two months, and the administration scrambled for a plan to house the incoming Martel students during the beginning of the spring 2002 semester. Hill, a senior, said the uncertainty was nothing the college couldn’t handle.
Eventually, Rice administration and Martel students worked out three options for housing during those two weeks. The students could either stay in their current housing situation from the end of last semester, live with an on-campus friend through the Adopt-A-Martelian plan, or stay at the Warwick, the same hotel where Speros and Marian Martel made their home more than half a century before. In October, applications for freshman transfers became available. Sixty-three freshmen were accepted: five each from Brown and Jones Colleges, and up to 12 from each of the other colleges.
martel at the start
