Heritage, Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 1989 Page: 20
38 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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HISTORIC ARCHITECTURE
It is perhaps appropriate that
the architecture of Galveston
is linked so strongly with a monarch
who could claim with some
validity to "rule the waves", for
Victoria was born in 1837, just
one year before Galveston was
incorporated. She died in 1901,
the year after the Great Storm
that brought the seemingly invincible
"Queen of the Gulf" to a
dreadful and devastating halt.
Galveston has a longer history
as a maritime haven from
the storms of the Gulf of Mexico,
although some of the seafarers
who found safe harbor in Galveston
Bay hardly represented the
kind of citizens on whom one
would wish to found a city! Jean
Lafitte's notorious Maison
Rouge has since disappeared, but
the rumor of his pirate treasure
lingers still upon the island. In
more civilized, but still troubled
times, Samuel May Williams
whose personal resources had
largely funded the Texian revolution
against Mexico that resulted
in the establishment of the
Republic of Texas in 1836, had I
established residence on the is- li}
land and joined with others to
establish a city. The group hired
New Yorker John D. Groesbeck
to survey and divide the-and. He
established a gridiron plan, sup- VI(
posedly based on Philadelphia,
using alphabetized streets running
parallel to the bay shore, beginning
with Avenue A at the
water's edge, and organized with
narrow alleys between each lettered street.
The perpendicular streets were numbered.
By the 1850s Galveston had grown to a city
of over 7,000 and was recognized as Texas'
major Gulf coast port. Agricultural products
flowed from the rapidly developing
river valleys to -the north, with cotton
being a major export crop.
And thereby hangs a tale, for Galveston
to me is almost a home away from home.
Though Galveston was but a rough encampment
in the time that Manchester,
England was already a city many hundreds
of years old, it was to be a thread of cotton-TORIAN ARCHITECTL
IN GALVESTON
By David G. Woodcock
that bound the two cities together, and
which provides my own link from one city
to the other. Like Galveston, Manchester
in the 19th century was a city of unbridled
energy, a home for powerful causes, and a
mixture of wealth and poverty. The Industrial
Revolution had laid its hand on
Manchester early in the century, the first
commercial rail link in the country had
connected it to the great ocean port of Liverpool,
and the factory system was applied
to spinning and later the weaving of cotton
in great brick factories surrounded by
squalid areas of workers' housing. TheManchester climate, damp and
temperate, was ideal for spinning
and the city flourished in all
manner of trading enterprises,
* but King Cotton ruled. At the
end of the war in America, the
importing of cotton from the
I_ port of Galveston continued
J apace. Manchester had become a
commercial center second only
to London. The center of the city
was filled with vast warehouses,
banking houses and trading establishments
of all kinds, generally
clothed in the grand eclectic
style that we have come to
know as "Victorian." The Victorian
architect was blessed with
clients who had a growing knowledge
of the world of architecture
and a global grasp that stemmed
from the trading empire that
they ruled. Richness of texture,
material and detail was the standard
and the designs could be
derived from the Roman, the
Gothic, the Renaissance and any
other source that caught the designer's
fancy! One of the grandest
of these palaces of commerce
was S. and J. Watts' Warehouse
on Portland Street, which
opened for business in 1858. A
vast five-story structure, it exemplified
the scale, exuberance and
self-confidence of the Manchester
trader...and King Cotton
JRE made it happen.
In that same year of 1858
Galveston saw the first evidence
of this same spirit in structural
form with the construction of the
Hendley Building on Avenue B,
by that time already known as the Strand.
In reality this was four buildings, each separated
by a brick fire wall, with the party
walls defined on the exterior with granite
blocks, which also formed quoins at each
comer of the building. The structure was,
in its organization, a model for later buildings
of its kind, with a high first floor to
allow good air movement in the steamy
heat of summer, and large windows on its
upper floors for the same purpose as well as
to let in light for the good conduct of
business. The Hendley Building is remarkable
also for the construction of its lower20 HERITAGE * SPRING 1989
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Texas Historical Foundation. Heritage, Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 1989, periodical, Spring 1989; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth45432/m1/20/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Foundation.