Magale Building
Galveston, Galveston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A fire on The Strand in 1869 destroyed an earlier structure at this site. John F. Magale (d. 1880) built this edifice in 1870 to house his wholesale liquor business. Cast iron was used for the first floor facade and window hood molding for the Victorian building. Similar detailing decorates the adjoining structure, erected the following year. From 1889 until the late 1960s, this building was occupied by J. F. Smith and brother, A well-known paint and hardware store. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1978
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After an 1869 fire swept The Strand, John F. Magale rebuilt on this site in 1870 to house his wholesale liquor business, giving the Victorian structure a cast-iron first-floor facade and ornate window hoods. For much of the next century it served as a well-known paint and hardware store. It stands as part of Galveston's storied commercial district in the island's boom years as a Gulf port.
Why it matters
The Strand's cast-iron commercial buildings capture Galveston's Gilded Age heyday as one of the busiest ports and trading centers on the Gulf Coast.
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Related people
- · John F. Magale
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Greenleve, Block & Co. Building
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Completed in 1882 for the wholesale dry-goods firm of Greenleve, Block & Co., this building was the work of Galveston's celebrated architect Nicholas J. Clayton. Its brick and carved-stone façade, cast-iron columns, and flanking pavilions typify the elaborate commercial architecture of the booming Gilded Age port. Dry-goods firms and later ship chandlers occupied it for nearly a century.
1871 Thomas Jefferson League Building
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On the Strand — Galveston's "Wall Street of the Southwest" — attorney and future judge Thomas Jefferson League began this three-story commercial block in 1871, on the very spot where an 1869 arson fire had swept a mile-wide swath. Fronted with decorative cast iron and a galvanized cornice, it housed clothiers, booksellers, and cotton factors, and later sheltered the Levy family's hardware business for half a century.
Nicholas J. Clayton
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Born in Ireland and raised by his widowed mother in Ohio, Nicholas Joseph Clayton served in the Union navy during the Civil War before finding his life's calling in Galveston. Sent there in 1872 to oversee two building projects, he stayed to become the city's defining architect during its golden era, designing churches, homes, and commercial landmarks across Texas and the South. His surviving works include the Bishop's Palace, "Old Red" at the medical college, and St. Mary's Cathedral in Austin.
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