A local historian recounts nearly seventy years of seduction and scandal along the Texas Gulf Coast in this lively chronicle of Galveston’s notorious past. Known today as a colorful resort destination featuring family entertainment and a thriving arts district, Galveston, Texas, was once notorious for its flourishing vice economy and infamous red-light district. Called simply “The Line,” the unassuming five blocks of Postoffice Street came alive every night with wild parties and generous offerings of love for sale. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, The Line was a stubborn mainstay of the island cityscape until it was finally shut down in the 1950s. But ridding Galveston of prostitution would prove much more difficult than putting a padlock on the front door. In Galveston’s Red Light District, Texas historian Kimber Fountain pursues the sequestered story of women who wanted to make their own rules and the city that wanted to let them.
Alleys and back buildings have been largely overlooked in studies of the American urban environment. And yet, rental alley houses, servant and slave quarters, carriage houses, stables, and other secondary structures have lined the alleys and filled the backyards of Galveston since its early days as a growing port city on the upper Texas Gulf Coast. Like their counterparts in other cities, these buildings and their inhabitants have had a profound visual, physical, and social impact on the history and development of Galveston. Interweaving written documents, oral interviews, and pictorial images, Beasley presents a vivid picture of Galveston’s alleys and alley life from the founding of the city into the twentieth century. The book blends a unique combination of research, photography, and the voices of those who have lived and live along the alleys. Beasley has uncovered and analyzed a wealth of new information not only about the back buildings of Galveston but also about their occupants and the complex cultural forces at work in their lives.
The Galveston Architecture Guidebook will be invaluable to all those who visit Galveston. Historic preservationists, scholars of nineteenth-century material culture, architects, and historians will be fascinated by the broad range of buildings and urban conditions it documents. Finally, anyone interested in Galveston or the Gulf Coast will find in this book a wealth of information.
Known today as a colorful resort destination featuring family entertainment and a thriving arts district, Galveston was once notorious for its flourishing vice economy and infamous red-light district. Called simply "The Line," the unassuming five blocks of Postoffice Street came alive every night with wild parties and generous offerings of hourly love. A stubborn mainstay of the island cityscape for nearly seventy years, it finally shut down in the late 1950s. But ridding Galveston of prostitution would prove much more difficult than putting a padlock on the front door. Kimber Fountain pursues the sequestered story of women who wanted to make their own rules and the city that wanted to let them.
Discover the haunting history of this town on the Texas coast—includes photos. One of the oldest cities in Texas, Galveston has witnessed more than its share of tragedies. Devastating hurricanes, yellow fever epidemics, fires, a major Civil War battle, and more cast a dark shroud on the city’s legacy. Ghostly tales creep throughout the history of famous tourist attractions and historical homes. The altruistic spirit of a schoolteacher who heroically pulled victims from the floodwaters during the great hurricane of 1900 roams the Strand. The ghosts of Civil War soldiers march up and down the stairs at night and pace in front of the antebellum Rogers Building. The spirit of an unlucky man decapitated by an oncoming train haunts the railroad museum, moving objects and crying in the night. In this fascinating book, Kathleen Shanahan Maca explores these and other haunted tales from the Oleander City.
Along Galveston's Gulf Coast runs a seventeen-foot-high, ten-mile-long protective barrier--a response to the nation's all-time deadliest natural disaster. The seawall remains a stoic protector more than a century later, shielding the island from much more than physical destruction. As the foundation of Seawall Boulevard, this structure created an entirely new tourism industry that buoyed the city's economy through war, the Great Depression and hurricanes. Adapting to the cultural trends and political movements that defined the past century, the seawall represents the unbreakable spirit of Galveston's resilient population and provides a fascinating glimpse into bygone times.
Old God's Time (March 2023), Sebastian Barry's stunning new novel, available to pre-order now Following the end of the First World War, Eneas McNulty joins the British-led Royal Irish Constabulary. With all those around him becoming soldiers of a different kind, however, it proves to be the defining decision of his life when, having witnessed the murder of a fellow RIC policeman, he is wrongly accused of identifying the executioners. With a sentence of death passed over him he is forced to flee Sligo, his friends, family and beloved girl, Viv. What follows is the story of this flight, his subsequent wanderings, and the haunting pull of home that always afflicts him. Tender, witty, troubling and tragic, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty tells the secret history of a lost man.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, Galveston was a beacon of opportunity on the Texas Gulf Coast. Dubbed the "Wall Street of the Southwest," its laissez-faire reputation called those hungry for success to its shores. Led by brothers Salvatore and Rosario at the height of Prohibition, the Maceo family answered that call and changed the Oleander City forever. They built an island empire of gambling, smuggling and prostitution that lasted three decades. Housed in their nightclubs frequented by stars like Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington, they endeared themselves to their Galveston neighbors by sharing their profits, imitating crime syndicates in their native Sicily. Though certainly no saints, the Maceos helped bring prosperity to a community weary from a century of turmoil. Discover the history of Galveston's famous crime family with authors Nicole Boatman, Dr. Scott Belshaw and Texas historian Richard McCaslin.
Set in Galveston during the 1900 storm, the most devastating natural disaster in the history of the United States, this sweeping novel follows the fates of several richly drawn characters. It is the story of Sal, the little girl who is wise beyond her years and who holds out as much hope for the world as she does for her father, the ruined son of a respected father. It is the story of Sister Zilphia, the nun who helps run the St. Mary's Orphanage. The only thing separating the two long buildings of the orphanage is a fragile line of sand dunes; the only thing separating Zilphia from the world is the brittle faith that she has been sent there to consider. A faith that has never been truly tested. Until now. And it is the story of Galveston herself, the grand old lady of the Gulf Coast, with her harbor filled with ships from the world over; her Victorian homes and her brothels and her grand pavilions set in their own parks; and her stately mansions along Broadway, the highest ground on the island, at eight feet above sea level. All must face their darkest night now, as nature hurls the worst she can muster at the narrow strip of sand and saltgrass that is doomed to become, for a time, part of the ocean floor. This is the story of heroes and villains, of courage and sacrifice and, most of all, of people trying desperately to survive. And it is the story of an era now gone, of splendor and injustice, filled with the simple joy of living. Prologue It started raining after midnight. At first a few heavy drops, as large as pebbles, splattered against windows, and spotted the dry pavement of the streets. They plinked into half-full troughs of dirty water outside the saloons on Post Office Street; horses tied there winced against the stings. People inside the saloons-sailors and dock workers and whores-paid no attention to the steadily quickening tattoo being pelted out on the tin sheets or slates of the roofs but kept to the business at hand: the drinking, and gambling, and the sweaty, brief stabbing away at the very oldest of human exertions. Some of Galveston's people, in other parts of the city, listened to the rain from their beds. A few, who had looked up that day at the Levy Building on Market Street and noticed the pair of warning flags that flew from the fourth-floor offices of the Weather Bureau, knew that this was the first, slow calling card of a tropical storm. Isaac Cline, the chief of the bureau, had hoisted the flags on Friday morning, and they had danced and popped in the brisk north wind all day. The red one, with the black box in its middle, meant that a particularly malevolent storm was a possibility. The white one, above it, meant that if it came, it would come from the northwest. But not too many people had seen the flags. And now the first big drops of rain plopped into the sand dunes and salt grass of the island and slid through the muted light of the gas street lights in town, and nobody paid much attention to them. Those in bed closed their eyes and let the tapping of the rain sing them to sleep. It had come a long way, this storm. Almost two weeks before, somewhere on the immense, swaying surface of the eternal Atlantic, a small portion of the sea had rebelled against the unremitting late summer heat, and heaved itself up in protest. Africa lay a thousand miles to the east, over the vast, bowllike curve of the world, and many more thousands of miles of ocean and sky stretched endlessly to the west. The air above the place had become suddenly full of new, burdensome moisture.
