Page 35 - Galveston Monthly March 2019

use some of the principles of the Baux-Arts architecture. Other construction, thanks to another wallop from Mother Nature
times, he would ignore them. What heiner had done with the - in the form of hurricane Alicia, a violent category 3 storm that
first addition was to make it sort of asymmetrical, and Clayton caused nearly $3 billion in damages, and resulted in severe
attempted to restore some symmetry to the building with structural damage in parts of Galveston in August 1983.
this large entablature at the top of the building that he placed The island would most likely have been wiped off the map,
over the center of the building that looked sort of like a giant just as it had been in 1900, if not for the seawall, a massive
handlebar mustache. Then he placed two smaller entablatures undertaking in the wake of the Great Storm of 1900. The
on either side.” seawall held during Alicia’s storm surge and saved the coastal
When the building was restored in 1983-’84, Gaertner says, area from complete devastation - but the hurricane was so
“All of the ornate galvanized sheet metal work around the destructive that its name would be retired the following year.
cornice of the building had to be restored using fiberglass. “We were under construction when hurricane Alicia hit, and
Because we are doing historic rehabilitation, it is important to the heavy, wind-driven rain had saturated the brick. We didn’t
retain, when you can, the original materials, but in some cases know it, because it took it a week for the water to soak down to
it’s not feasible. Galvanized sheet metal has a very limited the ground floor,” Gaertner says.
“The ground floor had these original columns - about
lifespan in Galveston. We knew fiberglass would last longer.”
Bottom image courtesy of Mitchell Historic Properties Image courtesy of Rosenberg Library “When we began the early stages of the work on that building, of brick. The columns were deteriorated, so we’d taken the
18-inches to 2-foot on each side - under open arches that were
The restoration of that entablature, Gaertner says, “cost about
made to look like cast iron, but they were actually made out
as much as a top of the line Mercedes sedan, brand new.”
columns down and were repairing them. But they were using
the idea was that there would be a swimming pool on the
roof. As time went by, they decided a swimming pool was
the original bricks as part of good preservation practice.”
“Well, when the water started to soak down, these columns
not a big deal in terms of the occupancy rate. So it went from
being a swimming pool to a space for a very large hot tub and
began to fail. They were cracking open on their Xy axis. in the
an ‘Endless Pool’ with swim-current options, that allow you
afternoon, the masons came to get me and said, ‘We have
some columns that we just repaired, and they’re cracking.’ i
to swim in place, against the current, without actually going
anywhere. But then, the hot tub and swimming pool idea got
went and looked at them, and i saw the hairline cracks. i went
to the contractor’s office and told him to get every shoring
smaller and smaller, and then the idea just vanished, and it
tower he can get and bring them to Galveston as fast they can
became just a rooftop bar.”
get them here.”
The whole project nearly came crashing down while under
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