Albertson Home
Galveston, Galveston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This historic house was built in 1870 by Charles Albertson in the Lost Bayou section of the current San Jacinto historical district. Albertson was a cotton buyer active in Galveston until 1900. The great storm of 1900 left the house seriously damaged, but still standing. In 1903, Ben Blum bought and remodeled the house, and divided the property with this wing of the house moved east and closer to the street. Blum rented the east wing, supplying rented living space for the population influx to Galveston. The two-story house is a classic example of post-civil war southern town house architecture with octagonal columns and bracketed eaves. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2014
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1870 by cotton buyer Charles Albertson in Galveston's Lost Bayou section, this two-story house is a classic example of post–Civil War Southern town architecture, with octagonal columns and bracketed eaves. The 1900 Great Storm left it badly damaged but standing. In 1903 Ben Blum bought and remodeled it, moving one wing closer to the street and renting rooms to newcomers during the island's population boom.
Why it matters
The house reflects the cotton economy and rebuilding that shaped Galveston in the decades after the Civil War and the 1900 storm.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Charles Albertson
- · Ben Blum
Related events
- · 1900 Galveston hurricane
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
George H. Nicholls
Galveston, TX
George H. Nicholls arrived in Galveston as a mariner and found his fortune in the warehouse trade, starting as the first employee of Geo. M. Steirer & Co. In 1888 he and a partner bought out their employer to form Wiley & Nicholls, a warehousing and freight-transfer firm at 19th Street and the Strand. As the business prospered, Nicholls built this home in 1893—the first house on 24th Street—living here until moving to a larger residence in 1899.
Hutchings House
Galveston, TX
John Henry Hutchings came from North Carolina to Galveston in the 1840s and, with partners John Sealy and George Ball, built the banking and commission house of Ball, Hutchings & Co. On Avenue O he raised one of early Galveston's rare brick homes—complete with a schoolroom—using bricks fired on a Brazoria plantation. During the Civil War the firm ran cotton through Matamoros, Mexico, and Hutchings served the Confederate government; the storm-battered house, later expanded by architect Nicholas Clayton, stayed in the family into the twentieth century.
Carl and Hilda Biehl House
Galveston, TX
Two years after the 1900 hurricane leveled much of Galveston, German immigrant Carl Christian Biehl arrived and built a shipping firm that served the island in the years before Houston's port rose to prominence. In 1915 he bought a storm-damaged property at 1416 Broadway and replaced it with a brick-and-concrete Classical Revival home, designed by architect Anton F. Korn, Jr. and engineered to withstand the Gulf's storms. The house stayed in the Biehl family for nearly a century, cared for at the last by their daughter, the artist Margaret 'Sis' Biehl.
Wegner House
Galveston, TX
Completed in 1892 for Ernest and Christiana Wegner, this L-plan Queen Anne Victorian rose on a high brick basement in Galveston's San Jacinto neighborhood during the island's booming business era. Designed by architect Carl Heufs, it was remodeled in 1933 in the Arts and Crafts style, and its facade still shows both. Remarkably, the house came through the catastrophic 1900 Great Storm nearly untouched while neighboring homes were destroyed, and it stayed in the Wegner family for 81 years.