Galveston Architecture Guidebook

Galveston contains the largest and most historically significant collection of nineteenth-century buildings of any Texas city. As a result of preservation efforts in recent years, Galveston’s architecture and history have risen to national prominence. This is the first comprehensive guide to the architecture of this unusual Gulf Coast city.

The Galveston Architecture Guidebook includes the city’s imposing business blocks, institutional buildings, and houses, both large and small. Conceived in the nineteenth century, Galveston’s town plan was highly sophisticated, reflecting the city’s role as a major Southern port from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the twentieth century. The guidebook also addresses more recent architectural episodes, such as the growth of the city’s highly acclaimed medical center, the development of its neighborhoods, and the evolution of its beach front.

Each entry in the guidebook includes a photograph, an identifying number keyed to a tour map, as well as historical, descriptive, and critical commentary. Also included are several appendices for easy reference: an illustrated building typology, an architectural glossary, and a selected bibliography.

The Galveston Architectural 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.

Preservationist Ellen Beasley has received the Rome Prize in Urban Planning and Design at the American Academy in Rome and a Loeb Fellowship to the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She is the author of The Alleys and Back Buildings of Galveston, published by Rice University Press in 1996.

Architectural historian Stephen Fox is a Fellow of the Anchorage Foundation of Texas and has written extensively about Houston and Texas architecture.