There are many owls on campus that leap out at you and many more that you can search for and possibly never find. Some are so high they are difficult to see and some are in very obscure or detailed areas. I gave a cursory glance around Baker Hall and could not find any owls but kept being drawn to these exterior light fixtures. These reminded me of some type of helmet; I kept envisioning one of Wagner's Valkyries wearing one. I decided to take a closer look because I thought these were perhaps meant to represent a helmet for Athena (a reasonable conclusion since this building houses the Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Political Science Department) and that the sides were meant to represent the wings of an owl. Upon closer inspection I discovered that there is an owl actually depicted on the fixture. Stephen Fox in his Campus Guide: Rice University indicates that these were designed by Kent Bloomer, a professor of architecture at Yale, and that these "evoke the outspread wings of an owl." They clearly do, but I believe the photo also shows the clear resemblance to a helmet.
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