Soul Searching: the Galveston Historical Foundation
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SETTING A COURSE An early success of the Galveston Historical Foundation was their restoration of the 1877 tall ship Elissa, purchased in Piraeus, Greece and brought back to Galveston. LEFT: The hull in its Greek shipyard. ABOVE: 26 Model posing to provide scale e t i for artist restoring the bow. c . 8 0 0 2 L L A F NEVER KNEW THAT MY FURNITURE urban pioneers such as Sally Wallace, Bill Fullen, Meyer Reiswerg, and Robert Lynch, each taking on individual structures. In the weeks following Ike, COULD FLOAT, ESPECIALLY NOT MY insurance adjusters toting notebook computers combed this district, estimating the cost of repairs in THREE-CUSHIONED COUCH WITH ITS the tens of millions. Where horse-drawn carriages had ferried tourists a few weeks earlier, teams of HEAVY WOODEN ARMS, THE ONE THAT mold remediation workers in white hazmat “bunny suits” wrestled with yellow generator-powered dry- I NEEDED HELP TO BUDGE. BUT THERE ing tubes. When a few of the island’s cafés and restaurants IT WAS, DOING A LEISURELY WATER BALLET WITH reopened, most conversations focused on who was coming back to the Strand (and the rest of town) I and who wasn’t. Comparisons were made to the piv- TWO ARMCHAIRS, A LOVESEAT, AND A MID-19TH- otal disaster 108 years earlier. After the 1900 storm, the last hurricane to inundate the island, the Strand CENTURY STEAMER TRUNK. had slid into decline. By the 1960s the district had become a skid row, with dingy bars and strip joints interspersed among ships’ chandleries, produce My ground-floor loft in the 1874- Dance of the Furniture. My walls had held as well. warehouses, and other businesses serving the port. vintage Sherman Building, half a My next-door neighbors were less lucky. Through Unless you were in the maritime trade, you didn’t block south of Galveston’s historic doors thrown wide, waves had swept their furniture venture north of Market Street, especially at night. Strand, had taken on almost seven into the walls, where soggy insulation now bulged As part of the social and intellectual ferment of feet of water during the night as the between bent steel studs. the late 1960s, Galvestonians began taking a new eye of Hurricane Ike passed directly Throughout the Strand Historic District, fellow look at the Strand and the residential neighborhoods overhead, pushing the bay a mile up residents and merchants faced similar devastation, as abutting downtown. In 1966 Houston architect Howard Barnstone and French photog- rapher Henri Cartier-Bresson opened eyes with The Galveston That Was (Texas A&M University Press), a book of photographs depicting in melancholy black and white the once grand houses and commercial buildings. Two years later the Soul Searching Galveston Junior League purchased the First National Bank Building at 22nd and Strand and its next-door In the wake of neighbor, the Truehardt-Adriance Building with its distinctive poly- Hurricane Ike, the chrome brick façade, intending to onto the island and clear across restore them. Broadway, in some places all the way “Sally Wallace and others saw preservation as a to the seawall. With sustained winds Galveston Historical way to hold the community together,” explained of 110 miles per hour, Ike had ranked architectural historian Stephen Fox, adjunct profes- as a high Category 2 on the Saffir- Foundation is sor at Rice University. “George Mitchell also had an Simpson scale, but at 492 miles wide, idea of what the Strand could be—an economic it had packed the destructive storm idea. In New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah, surge of a Category 4. challenged to under- the preservation movement caused communities to When the water level was down both redefine their identities and see the economic to three feet and the banshee winds of stand the very nature benefit of doing that.” the eye wall had given way to a brisk One local group spearheaded this effort: the breeze and light rain, I ventured of its existence. Galveston Historical Foundation (GHF). Growing down from my shelter in the corridor out of the Galveston Historical Society, founded in between my upstairs neighbors’ apart- 1871 to preserve historically significant papers and ments to take stock. I eased my way around the documents, it had changed its name and mission building in thigh-deep water—actually more a café- by Sandy Sheehy when it incorporated in 1954, quickly taking on the au-lait slurry of bay bottom mud laced with rain- challenge of rescuing the 1839 Samuel May F bows of diesel from the ruptured gas tanks of boats did owners of the imposing buildings that housed Williams House from demolition. By the 1970s it H G F lifted from the harbor two-and-a-half blocks away shipping firms, the cotton exchange, warehouses, had become a cadre of committed individuals with O Y S and slammed into buildings, light posts, and park- and retail stores back in the 19th century when the distinctive visions. Evangeline Wharton, who was 27 E T R ing lots, where they rested at dizzying angles. Strand was hailed as the Wall Street of the appointed to the Texas Historical Commission, took e U t i O c . C Remarkably, the 12-foot-tall mahogany doors open- Southwest. Galveston-born oilman George Mitchell it upon herself to have all the historical plaques 8 S 0 O 0 T ing from my loft onto the street were intact, as were and his family later invested millions of dollars in redesigned. Peter Brink, Paulie Gaido, and Robert 2 O L H L P their glass panels, through which I viewed the buying and renovating these buildings, along with Lynch decided that Galveston needed a genuine tall A F ship (as opposed to the replicas favored prise of both locals and regular visitors, by other seaports). Their worldwide GHF announced that Dickens on the search took them to Piraeus, Greece, Strand would take place as scheduled where they purchased the rusting hulk of on December 6 and 7. With most the 1877 barque Elissa and brought her stores on the Strand yet to recover, the back to Galveston. event resembled its earlier incarnations GHF also engaged in lower-key when it drew crowds to what was then preservation activism. It set up a revolv- a skid row. Three entertainment stages ing fund to purchase endangered homes and 70 vendors were scheduled, and and commercial properties and hold GHF offered returning Strand-area them until buyers came forward who merchants free booths. “We made the would restore them. It bought or entered decision the day after the storm, main- into management agreements for such ly for the community, to provide hope properties such as Ashton Villa, from for people,” explained Clay Wade, whose balcony the Emancipation GHF director of events. Also true was Proclamation had been read, and the that the expected revenues were badly Garten Verein, a German-American needed for the restoration of the ten social club. It maintained the gaslights, historic structures the foundation benches, and signage in the Strand either owned or managed. Damage Historic District. It operated a salvage ranged from downed tree limbs at the warehouse to recycle windows, shutters, Menard House to four feet of water in columns, and other elements from the ballroom of Ashton Villa. demolished buildings and held demon- Remediation alone has cost $3 million. stration classes on restoring historic homes. Over time, however, GHF evolved THE PRICE OF PRESERVATION from a scrappy, nationally known urban The GHF’s annual Victorian-themed holiday recovery group into a comfortably fund- festival, Dickens on the Strand, is its major ed events promotion and property man- fundraiser. agement organization. It became to That did not include Galveston what the the expense of top-tier cultural rebuilding or of sav- charities—the opera, ing whatever 19th- EOPLE WITH FOND MEMORIES OF THE OLD ALVESTON ISTORICAL the ballet—were to P G H century artifacts Houston, and in the FOUNDATION BEGAN TO WONDER WHETHER IT WOULD CONTINUE PRIMARILY could be salvaged. process respectability Each of the buildings replaced feistiness. AS A SELF-PERPETUATING INSTITUTION OF THE TOURIST INDUSTRY, OR RETURN carried maximum This reflected a larg- TO ITS ROOTS FIGHTING FOR AN ENDANGERED BUILT ENVIRONMENT ONE insurance, but that er trend: by the close didn’t begin to of the 20th-century, BUILDING AT A TIME, OR TRANSFORM INTO SOMETHING ELSE ALTOGETHER. cover just the reme- preservation had diation tab. become mainstream, Even in years lacking the sense of cri- without hurricanes, sis that had informed the 1970s. The change was also December, began in 1974 as a potluck costume party these house museums were money pits. Popular a consequence of Galveston’s own nature. The novel- where members celebrated their preservation victo- from the 1950s through the 1970s, historic structures ist Edna Ferber called the city “a fly encased in ries. Opened to the public the following year, it preserved as examples of life in earlier eras had lost amber,” and once the initiatives undertaken by GHF expanded to a full-weekend street fair in 1983 and their appeal as attractions. Keeping them secured, and individual residents took hold, the community became a major fundraiser. In 2007 it drew a crowd maintained, insured, and staffed for the benefit of a revealed itself as a ready-made tourist attraction. of 34,000 and netted over $250,000. The foundation’s declining trickle of visitors tied up money that could “Galveston was the only city in Texas that still other big moneymaker, the Historic Homes Tour otherwise have been used to buy and hold threatened existed in a manner that allowed you to tell what it held the first two weekends in May, netted $100,000 properties like the Jean Lafitte Hotel.