A Walking Tour of Galveston, Texas
This walking tour leads through the East End of Galveston, a town unjustly more famous for its buildings that fell down (in America's deadliest hurricane back in 1900) than the ones that are standing today.
During the 1800s Galveston was a booming port city rivaled only by New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico. it was the most sophisticated city in Texas; the first to get telephone lines, the first to get gaslights, the first to get electric lights. As many as 18 newspapers battled to bring residents the latest news of the world.
Everything changed on September 8, 1900 when the storm surge from hurricane winds swamped the city. An estimated 6,000 people perished and the Galveston storm remains the deadliest disaster in American history. The city rebuilt, including a protective seawall, but never really recovered. While the population of Houston grew by many hundreds of thousands 100 years later Galveston was home to less than 60,000 people, scarcely more than lived on the island prior to the flood.
All the better for those who live in the graceful old homes of the East End Historical District, comprised of over 50 blocks that was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and designated a National Historic Landmark. The architecture of the tree-lined streets reflects a variety of styles and periods, the earliest being examples of Greek Revival style built during the 1850’s. Early residents represented an economic and social cross-section of the community, also expressed in the dwellings which range from small, simple cottages to large, elaborate houses.
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