Cedar Lawn
Galveston, Galveston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In June 1926, the Cedar Lawn Company purchased nine city blocks for residential development. Company officers were W.L. Moody, III, President, W.D. Harden, Vice-President, and Clark W. Thompson, Secretary and Treasurer. The subdivision was designed as an enclave for the Moody family and officials of the Moody companies. Bounded by avenues L and N and 45th and 48th streets, Cedar Lawn became a distinctive Galveston neighborhood for its architecture and planning design. Thompson wrote in his early plans for Cedar Lawn, "Subdivisions are made and not born. It is rare that without farsighted planning a desirable neighborhood grows up by itself in an American city." Cedar Lawn's street plan interrupts the continuity of the city's standard grid, with a circle and two semicircles intersecting to form curves and a central community garden. Houses face away from surrounding streets to emphasize spatial insularity, and Cedar Lawn property owners even own their neighborhood streets. Original deed restrictions included construction costs, materials, and building setbacks to create a cohesive neighborhood. Cedar, oleander and palm trees planted along the streets and subdivision perimeter enhanced the landscape. Two of the first homes built in Cedar Lawn were for Clark and Libbie Thompson (1927) and W.L. and Edna Moody (1929). Over forty years, noted architects included Alfred Finn, Donald McKenzie and Robert Smallwood designed homes in Revival styles such as Tudor, Classical, Colonial, Mediterranean, and Italianate, as well as Moderne and Ranch styles. In 2002, Cedar Lawn Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. (2008)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1926, as Galveston recovered from the great storm era and reinvented itself, the Moody family—one of the island's wealthiest business dynasties—created Cedar Lawn as a planned residential enclave for family members and company officers. Its designers deliberately broke from Galveston's rigid grid, weaving in a circle, semicircles, and a shared central garden, with houses turned inward for a sense of retreat. Deed restrictions, curated architecture in Tudor, Mediterranean, and Colonial Revival styles, and streets owned by the residents themselves made it one of the city's most distinctive neighborhoods, recognized on the National Register in 2002.
Why it matters
Cedar Lawn captures the early-20th-century American ideal of the deliberately designed suburb, where farsighted planning and private wealth shaped how prosperous families chose to live.
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Related people
- · W.L. Moody III
- · Clark W. Thompson
Themes & tags
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