< PreviousMAJOR STORIES THROUGH THE YEARSSusan Sells! She Sells Down by the Sea ShoreSusan CahillABR, RSPS, CTA13450 FM 3005, Galveston, TX409-457-6995SusanCahillRealtor@gmail.com 908 23rd Street Galveston, TX, 77550 The Sealy Mansion once stood directly across from this HISTORIC JOHN SEALY GARAGE, built in 1909, and designated a CITY OF GALVESTON LANDMARK. Overlooking Ashton Villa and Rosenberg Library,it is zoned commercial &/or residential & features original long-leaf pine flooring, & reclaimed Ike’d lumber. If you desire Galveston’s downtown loft-style living, but prefer the privacy of your own home and large yard, this jewel is for you!The ground floor is over 5,000 sqft of commercial space & 1/2 Bath. $765,000NEW PRICE Celebrating 175 Years | The Daily News | 41Soon after Hurricane Ike had raked Galveston Island on Saturday, Sept. 13, 2008 and passed on to the mainland, reporters from The Daily News streamed out to report on what the storm had wrought.The following morning’s paper — despite the travails of getting around on the island and mainland Galveston County — began to chronicle the disaster.“All wind gauges on the island failed early during the storm, but before landfall the National Weather Service estimated the gusts would top 110 miles an hour,” one reporter noted.“The wind toppled concrete picnic tables on the seawall, ripped roofs off homes and businesses and toppled giant oak trees on the East End.“But the rising water wreaked the most havoc.“Most of the area behind the seawall was covered in a minimum of 4 feet of water. In some places, the water rose to more than 10 feet.”The 17-foot-tall seawall, on which construction began in 1902, two years after the devastating 1900 Storm, had provided some protection on the Gulf side, although Ike’s estimated 20-foot sea surge topped it. The surge overwhelmed the bay side of the island; Galveston’s historic downtown was left a wreck.The broad-shouldered storm — nearly 600 miles wide at its extreme — wrought havoc from the Louisiana coast southwest to Corpus Christi, after earlier raking the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Bahamas and Cuba.Reporters made their tortuous way around battered Galveston Island and the mainland.“High-profile pickup trucks braved hood-deep water on FM 2094, but the intersection with Highway 146 was completely blocked by water as high as stop signs in front of Stewart Elementary in Kemah,” a reporter found.HURRICANE IKEDay of agonyBY TOM BASSINGMAJOR STORIES THROUGH THE YEARS(LEFT) Maleni Garcia and Yesenia Vahena of Texas City relax in a Raton chair that washed up on the roadway while waiting for traffic to begin moving again on Interstate 45 as people try to re-enter Galveston Island in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike on Sept. 17, 2008. KEVIN M. COXOther reporters scoured the internet for what information could be found there.“Hurricane Ike disrupted electricity to roughly 2.1 million CenterPoint Energy customers and all 115,000 Gulf Coast customers of Texas-New Mexico Power, according to information posted Saturday on the companies’ Web sites,” one report read.“CenterPoint Energy estimated it could take four weeks or longer to restore power to its customers, a process which would begin Sunday.”No hurricane before had similarly curtailed access to the power grid.“The impact of Hurricane Ike on our service territory has been extensive and widespread, affecting more than 90 percent of our customers, which is the largest power outage event in our company’s more than 130-year history,” a CenterPoint spokesman told a reporter who was able to reach him.The news staff worked around the clock.“As Hurricane Ike spiraled on toward North Texas on Saturday, the island, which took the brunt of the storm’s wide girth, entered recovery mode and remained closed to all inbound traffic, officials said,” one report read.“Emergency crews’ search and rescue efforts focused on the West End, but the city had no immediate reports of fatalities.“About 100 people were rescued by Saturday afternoon, authorities said. At least four were flown to local hospitals in critical condition.“At least 17 structures have collapsed, including two apartment buildings. …”“The causeway was in ‘bad shape,’ City Manager Steve LeBlanc said. ‘It is covered in debris, and the road has buckled in places.’“But LeBlanc said he did not think the structural integrity of the bridge was compromised. The city was allowing people to leave the island.”Large numbers of people in Galveston County had disregarded evacuation orders; more than a dozen paid with their lives. Others required rescue.“City officials estimated 40 percent, or about 24,000, of the island’s residents chose to ride out the storm, which rumbled ashore with 110 mph winds and a surge of water that caught almost everyone off guard,” the paper reported.One sharp-eyed reporter discovered a particularly telling detail in the hurricane’s wake: “On the seawall, Ike sheared in half the plaque on the statue of victims of the 1900 Storm, their arms raised in mourning.”The Galveston County Daily News office can be seen between boats that came to rest on Interstate 45 in Galveston in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike on Sept. 14, 2008. KEVIN M. COX42 | The Daily News | Celebrating 175 Years Oscar Aleman carries a mirror to the debris pile at his flood-damaged home in Galveston. He said the pile of debris from Hurricane Ike grew so big that his wife, Suzi, put the “yard sale” sign on top. JENNIFER REYNOLDSMAJOR STORIES THROUGH THE YEARS Our past is important. It shapes who we are today and who we hope to become tomorrow. In 1954, Grace Memorial Park Cemetery was established along the extended stretch of road of Highway 6 to provide an eternal place of rest for the deceased and a place of peaceful meditation and solace to the living. It stood alone until 1971 when Jim and Lynne Hayes established the first funeral home on Highway 6 to exclusively serve the citizens of the Santa Fe and Hitchcock communities, Hayes Funeral Home. In 1987, Jim Hayes, along with Marie Istre, opened Grace Memorial Park Crematory, the first crematory in Galveston County. Sixteen years later, the cemetery was purchased and added to the properties operating under the Hayes name, with the credo of “serving others as we would wish to be served”. The first, second, and third generation of the Hayes family, and the staff who proudly support our mission, are dedicated to serving the needs of our community. We invite you to tour our facilities and grounds and thank you for giving us the opportunity to serve you during your time of greatest need. HAYES FUNERAL HOME 409-925-3501 www.hayesfuneralhome.com HAYES GRACE MEMORIAL PARK 409-925-2535 www.hayesgracememorialpark.com Hayes Celebrating 175 Years | The Daily News | 4344 | The Daily News | Celebrating 175 Years Nicholas Clayton, who would go on to become Galveston’s most influential 19th century architect, arrived on the island in 1872 at the end of a peripatetic journey that began in Cork County, Ireland, when the 8-year-old boy and his recently widowed mother left the Old World for the new.Clayton, as a young man, found his way from Cincinnati to New Orleans, on to Louisville and St. Louis, and eventually to Memphis, where the journeyman — now a skilled plasterer, marble carver and draftsmen — hired on with the architectural firm of Jones and Baldwin.The firm in 1872 dispatched him to Galveston to oversee the construction of two disparate buildings: the First Presbyterian Church and the Tremont Hotel, which he saw through.The previously restless Clayton, the son of an island nation, found on Galveston Island a home, where he stayed and opened his own architectural practice. He soon earned a sterling reputation for his substantial and handsome buildings and houses.In 1883, at the height of his powers, he came to the attention of Alfred Belo, publisher of The Galveston News, which had outgrown its antebellum home at 2217 Market Street.Belo’s late partner, Willard Richardson, The News’ most prominent publisher in the first three decades following the paper’s April 11, 1842, launch, had commissioned that iron-faced, three-story building, which housed the paper’s editorial operations and press; its business offices had remained on Tremont Street.NEWS’ BUILDINGS ARE PARTS OF THE LOCAL LANDSCAPE BY TOM BASSINGThe foundation and floor slab for the Teichman Road building are poured. At the time, the building was one of the most modern plants designed for newspaper production. DAILY NEWS FILECONSOLIDATION ON MECHANIC STREETRichardson, after the Civil War, had hired Belo, a former Confederate colonel, as a bookkeeper, and he soon became a trusted confidant. Both men were instrumental in building The News in circulation and in influence. Indeed, Adolph Ochs, who founded The New York Times nine years after The News’ debuted, often praised The News’ influence on his own newspapering philosophy.With Richardson’s death in 1875, Belo, his designated successor, took over.In reaching out to Clayton, eight years later, Belo was looking to physically imprint his stamp on The News.Clayton’s design, at what today is 2108 Mechanic, accomplished the feat. When the building opened in 1884, it was the first facility west of the Mississippi River solely dedicated to producing a newspaper — offices, newsroom, production and printing plant in one.It is a remarkable building, structurally sound and aesthetically taut.“The News building was a very inventive piece of architecture, given the energy Clayton was able to compress into the building’s street front,” said Stephen Fox, an architectural historian and co-author with Ellen Beasley of the “Galveston Architecture Guidebook.”“Clayton compacted so much visual energy into its design.”FANS AND CLOTHESPINSThe magisterial, three-story edifice opened to great fanfare on April 19, 1884, and the first issue printed there — doubling its content from a simple folio to a full eight pages — rolled off the presses the following morning.The first floor was given over to business offices and a counting room that led to a sizable vault, all of which fronted the steam-powered press.The newsroom was on the floor above, and behind it lay a large store of enormous rolls of newsprint feeding the behemoth below.In 1953, nearly three quarters of a century after The Galveston News building opened, a Ball High School student named Jimmy McGlathery, moonlighting as a sports reporter, would return to the newsroom to write up his accounts of local games.The old Galveston Daily News building at 2108 Mechanic St. The building, affectionately known as “The Old Lady of Mechanic Street,” was built in 1883 and operations began in 1884. It had the distinction of being the only building in the South-west that housed a complete newspaper plant. ROSENBERG LIBRARY46 | The Daily News | Celebrating 175 Years He still recalls the efforts made by the building’s overseers to combat the summer heat and humidity — and their effect on producing copy.“Back then, of course, they didn’t have air conditioning, and with the big fans oscillating throughout the newsroom, we would have to bring in clothespins and attach them to the top of our copy to keep it from blowing back into the typewriter keys,” recounted McGlathery, a subsequent Princeton and Yale graduate now retired from a career teaching German literature at the University of Illinois-Champagne. “When we were done, we walked our stories over to the sports editor, clutching them so they wouldn’t blow away.”AESTHETICS AND STABILITYThe building’s third floor was the domain of those responsible for typesetting the paper.“The top floor of the structure is veritably a printers’ paradise, furnishing as it does one of the most elegant, best lighted and thoroughly ventilated composing rooms in America, if not in the world,” the paper gushed at the time. “The News building as it stands, with the new appliances that have been added, represents a cash outlay amounting in the aggregate to nearly $125,000” — the equivalent of $3 million today.A later writer for The News was just as taken with the façade: “High on the front of the building was an emblematic design made up of the twin torches of science, encircled with an olive wreath and surmounted with the Lone Star of Texas, all of which sprang from a semicircular shield, displaying the Greek letters alpha and omega.”As striking as the building’s appearance was, its durability was more significant.The Galveston News building withstood the 1900 Storm, its main press idled only until the Wednesday after the Saturday hurricane, the winds of which were recorded at 100 mph before the gale blew away the anemometer and all other instruments the National Weather Service had placed on a downtown rooftop.In those few intervening days, a hand press was put into service to print a two-sided sheet, essentially announcing the paper’s survival, which foretold the island’s.‘GOOD BONES’The celebratory announcement of the 1884 building’s opening boasted of its iron skeleton of rolled I-beams and fluted, iron columns supporting its three floors.Staircases, too, both spiral and platform, were fashioned from iron.Moreover, its side and rear brick walls were a stout 2 feet thick.The Daily News building on Teichman Road, where the paper operates to this day, photographed in the 1980s. DAILY NEWS FILEThe Galveston County Daily News, Texas’ oldest newspaper, is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year. JENNIFER REYNOLDS• 2016-2017 Texas Association of Realtors Region 10 Vice President• 2015 Texas Association of Realtors Executive Board• 2014 GAR Governmental Affairs Chairperson• 2013 “Best Realtor in Galveston County” Galveston County Daily News Readers Poll.• 2011-2012 GAR Local TREPAC Chairperson• 2010 President of the Galveston Association of Realtors• 2009-2010 President of the Galveston Historical Foundation• Member of the Rotary Club of Galveston, Texas. Paul Harris Fellow.• Big Brother in the Galveston County Big Brother & Big Sister Program• 1994-2000 Galveston City Council• 1998-2000 Galveston Wharves BoardDavid@DavidBowers.comThe House CompanyDavid BowersRealtor®409-763-2800SINCE 1976WOW 175 YEARS!The Daily NewsAgent to HGTV’s Property Brothers, Galveston 2017Nominated Top 5 Best Agent 2017Congratulations 20Online prOgrams.ZerO COmmute.The choice is clear. Celebrating 175 Years | The Daily News | 4748 | The Daily News | Celebrating 175 Years Celebrating 175 Years | The Daily News | 49“What people don’t typically recognize is that buildings usually are their most beautiful before the façade is put on,” said Gene Aubry, who was born on the island and later was the principal architect for The Daily News’ current offices and printing plant on Teichman Road. “It’s the bones of a building that are most interesting.“The Mechanic Street building had very good bones.”Yet, its skin still today demands attention.The façade featured vaulted arches of a neo-Renaissance style with stain-glass windows in double-hung sashes, around which were laid pressed, red bricks imported from Philadelphia and augmented with locally manufactured molded bricks and tiles tinted cream and black and a buff gray in between.“When you look at that building, it’s almost like a musical composition, all the sharps and flats perfectly placed, only written in masonry,” Aubry said. “That’s the magic of that building.”MOVE TO TEICHMAN ROADIn 1964, with the Hobby family’s purchase of The Daily News and its affiliated publications, construction began on joint offices and press facility, at 8522 Teichman Road, five miles across the island from the Mechanic Street building.Oveta Hobby, the family matriarch and widow of former newspaperman and Texas Gov. William Hobby, commissioned the new building, turning to the Houston-based architectural firm Barnstone & Aubry, whose portfolio included the Houston Post’s recent headquarters in its hometown.“We were both good friends with the Hobbys,” said Aubry, who now lives on the Gulf Coast island of Anna Maria, Fla. “When they were building a new building in Houston on the Southwest Freeway, Mrs. Hobby had asked me to do her executive offices. Through that, she and I became very good friends.”The friendship, and the firm’s reputation, won it the Galveston assignment, which was to be designed with one consideration paramount: It was to be capable of withstanding the fury that hurricanes have repeatedly brought to the island.“It wasn’t built to impress,” Aubry said. “It was built to serve its purpose.”A PRACTICAL DESIGNAubry’s plans called for a four-foot mound beneath the building, which stands on deep, concrete pilings.“The floor level was predicated on historical flood data from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,” he said. “That’s where you start.”The building’s concrete bones — the building in all is half concrete poured in place and half attached concrete panels — proved their worth when Hurricane Ike in September 2008 swept across the island, devastating many lesser buildings.Yet, the purposeful design has not been immune to criticism.“There is something tense and uneasy about the architecture of the News Building,” Fox wrote in his and Beasley’s guidebook to Galveston’s architecture. “Its gestural elements are overstated and under-detailed. Consequently, the building lacks the assurance characteristic of Barnstone & Aubry’s work.”That assessment elicited Aubry’s umbrage; he argues that critics miss the point.“First of all, we were designing a plant that has to produce a product,” he said. “It’s a very utilitarian building. The Galveston News building wasn’t designed to be exciting architecture. It was designed to withstand hurricanes and keep publishing. And it had to be done with a very tight budget, and it was.“I think it’s an important building, one that makes a statement as to what journalism is. What that building says is, ‘this is who we are, this is what we do.’“It’s blunt and honest. It’s not a building that gives the illusion that it’s something that it’s not. First of all, I recall thinking, ‘you’re building a building for the oldest newspaper in Texas; you want something solid.’“Just because some pissant storm comes along, you don’t want to have to shut down, and Ike proved they didn’t have to shut down. The building performed the way it was designed to perform. It stood up to Ike. The name of the game is printing a newspaper, that’s the whole point.”TRIGGER-HAPPY YAHOOSAubry’s most poignant design feature, reinforcing that a newspaper is produced inside the building, has been lost to the actions of armed and reckless sorts.The building, which stands just off the southern end of the causeway, once boasted a wall of towering plate-glass windows, which at night, with the pressroom illuminated, provided a view of the whirring press as newsprint wound its way through its muscular units and folder.Yet, despite the presence of pressmen overseeing the nightly production, some trigger-happy motorists couldn’t resist opening fire on the glass wall.“The beauty was that you could see the presses running as you came off the causeway,” Aubry said of his actualized design for the building’s rear wall. “But some idiots figured they could shoot out the windows, and they took shots.”Hurricane shutters, intended only to be lowered in advance of an arriving storm, were ordered permanently closed, depriving the motoring public of an alluring look at the presses in motion.“Those windows, the notion of transparency, emphasized the character of the building,” Fox said, admiringly. “They emphasized what goes on inside it.“It’s a real shame that they had to be closed off.”The old Galveston News building is on Mechanic Street in downtown Galveston. STUART VILLANUEVANext >