Historic District and Painted Ladies

 

Historic District and Painted Ladies

In the historic district of Galveston, there are many mansions and other interesting buildings of historic interest.  Not far from the historic district, there are Victorian Homes there – Painted Ladies.  We walked the historic district and then got in our Jeep to find the painted ladies!!

The most impressive of the mansions has to be the Moody Mansion.  It was built in 1895 by W.L. Moody, Jr. who was one of the wealthiest Americans during the first half of the 1900s.  His daughter, Mary Moody Northern grew up in the house and lived there for 3 decades after her father and husband both died in 1954.  She established the Mary Moody Northern Endowment, which restored, owns and operates the Moody Mansion.  There are tours of the mansion, but we didn’t do it on the day we were there.

This metal work was just above the entryway for carriages to arrive on the days there were formal dinners and celebrations at Moody Mansion.  If you look on the far-right side of the first image, you’ll see the driveway and the scroll work above the entryway.

This grand home/mansion was just a couple of blocks down from the Moody Mansion.  It’s called Open Gates and is also known as the Sealy Mansion.  It was designed for George Sealy, Sr., by New York architect Stanford White in 1889.  It was donated to the University of Texas medical Branch, which uses it for conferences and meetings.

Just a block down from Open Gates is Aston Villa.  It’s the oldest of the mansions along this street in the historic district.  It was built in 1859 and was the home of the James Moreau Brown family.  Mr. Brown was a banker, merchant and entrepreneur.  There was a smaller home next to it the seemed to be a sort of guest house.

We came across a number of churches in the historic district as well.  The two in the image above are Reedy Chapel (left) and First Baptist Church of Galveston (right).  The First Baptist Church is home to the oldest Southern Baptist in Texas.  It was founded in 1840, and the church was built in 1958.  The current building is the 4^th on this site.  Reedy Chapel was built in 1887 and is home to the oldest Black Methodist Church in Texas, established in 1848.  Between the two, I admit to liking the Reedy Chapel better – love the windows!!

A couple of other churches we saw on our walk were the Trinity Episcopal Church (left) and the Eaton Chapel(right).  The Trinity Episcopal Church was built between 1854 – 1858 and is the third Episcopal mission in Texas.  The Eaton Chapel, built in a Gothic Revival style, is adjacent to Trinity Episcopal Church.  It was built in 1882 and built as a memorial to Rev. Benjamin Eaton, who died in 1871.  After a city-wide fire in 1885, this chapel was used by St. Paul’s German Presbyterian Church, during their church’s repair.

Rounding out the sights we saw on our walking tour of the historic district (but not in the order that we saw them) are the Rosenberg Library (upper left), Galveston City Hall (lower left) and the Texas Heroes Monument (right).  The tie between the Texas Heroes Monument and the Rosenberg Library were that they were both gifts from Henry Rosenberg, a banker and merchant.  The Monument honors the heroes of the Texas Revolution, and was dedicated in April 1900.  The Library is the oldest free public library in continuous operation in Texas.  It was established in 1900 as well.  City Hall was built in 1914 – 1915, and housed Galveston’s form of city government, the Commission form of government.  This form of government was invented by Galveston and was used until 1960, when it moved to a Council-Manager form of government.

And now the fun driving part of our explorations on this day – the Painted Ladies!!  The first two that we saw were just a few houses away, so after I got out of my car to photograph the first (left), I just walked down the street to check out the 2^nd (right).  The lattice work and bright colors of the second really caught my eye!

And, speaking of bright colors, check out these two ladies!!  They had to be the brightest colored homes we saw.  The bright green almost made my eyes water!!  The yellow with the red trim was just so happy looking, it made the day brighter just looking at it!

Now, this house technically isn’t a painted lady for obvious reasons, but it was a very pretty Victorian style house.  I especially love the turret (I’ve always called it the Mad Sister Room!) and the intricate scroll iron work on the balcony.

These next two painted ladies weren’t nearly as bright as the green and yellow ones, although the one on the left seems to be in the middle of a paint job that will rival the others on the block!!  I liked the pink and green painted lady simply because her nice pastel type colors gave my eyes a rest!!

And this last un-painted lady is my favorite.  Why?  I just love thinking about how grand she can look once someone applies some TLC!!  She’s got a fabulous front porch and second story balcony, and, of course, my Mad Sister Room!!

Enjoy!!