Located on Jamail Plaza, opposite Baker Hall, the new home of The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University (architect: Robert A. M. Stern) features an impressive array of ornament and architectural sculpture designed by the Bloomer Studio. Most prominent are the cast bronze elements designed for the building’s formal entrance. The large doors alternate foliated panels with shallow relief plaques illustrating the many accomplishments of Jesse H. Jones, the Houston businessman and public servant for whom the school is named. The tympanum above the doors is a stylized version of the Houston skyline, with the Gulf Building, built by Jesse H. Jones, centrally featured. On pedestals flanking the doorway are a cast bull and a cast bear, emblematizing the American capital markets. The bronze columns and wings recall details from Rice’s beloved Lovett Hall, designed by Ralph Adams Cram, and make reference to the university’s symbolic owl.

To embellish the columns on the loggia above the entrance, the Bloomer Studio designed a group of hand-carved limestone capitals, which contain portraits of important economists and businessmen, including the university’s founder, William Marsh Rice, and the first great market economist, Adam Smith. In the lunettes above the windows of an interior courtyard, a series of cast aluminum plaques show student faces making a variety of grotesque and humorous expressions. All of these ornaments, orchestrated together, add rich narrative content to the building.