Page 36 - Galveston Monthly March 2019

islaNd hisTOrY | GALVESTON REPuRPOSEd

it was an all hands on deck moment - no one was
permitted to leave the job site.
“They got the shoring towers, and we started putting
them in to support the arches and take the load off the
arches. By 6 o’clock, the cracks were open so wide, you
could put your arm through them. Then the shoring towers
started to fail, so we had to add a second set of shoring
towers to each arch opening. it took a month working
24 hours a day to stabilize the building. This is in the
aftermath of a major hurricane. The island didn’t even
have electricity restored yet,” he says.
“Mr. Mitchell was afraid the walls would fall into the
street, and he had us brace the wall, so it wouldn’t fall. i
explained if the building would fall, it would fall straight
down, not to the side. But he said, ‘i don’t care. Brace it
up.’”
When the dust settled, Gaertner says, “i took one of the
original bricks, and i put it in a pale of water, and i let it sit
there for about a month. And then i took a wet brick and a
dry brick, and i had a testing lab break them. What i found
out was that when the brick was saturated with water, it
lost half of its strength because it was not a kiln-fired brick
like we have today. it was just sun baked brick, so it wasn’t
strong. When it got saturated, it started to revert to clay. it
got mushy.”
Gaertner says he realized that for good preservation
practice, as well as what was necessary for structural
engineering, they needed to rebuild the columns with a
hollow space in the middle that could be filled with high-
strength, reinforced concrete to form the column.
“So, that’s what we did. The original brick was used as a
decorative veneer on that concrete column, so that would
never happen again.”
Then there was the case of the disappearing bulldozer.
“Base flood elevation is 11 feet above sea level, so we had
to raise the ground floor of The Tremont to get it above the
base flood elevation,” he says.
“Because these big openings that were part of the
architectural design of the original warehouse and
allowed carts to be brought in, we were able to drive in
dump trucks, dump dirt out and push it around inside the
building with a bulldozer to build the floor up.”
it was a lot of work, but certainly made easier by the
original design features - or so he thought.
“One day, i went to the job site, and there’s a bulldozer
in the corner. i looked back again, and the bulldozer
was gone. i had no idea where it could have gone,
but we discovered it had fallen through the roof of an
TOP: After category 3 hurricane Alicia struck Galveston in August 1983 underground vault.” Image courtesy of Mitchell Historic Properties
during construction, it was necessary to brace the walls of The 1879 Gaertner says they discovered the Blum Brothers had
Leon & h. Blum Building so they would not collapse; BOTTOM: Because built two massive underground cisterns - 12 feet wide and Images courtesy of Michael Gaertner
base flood elevation was eleven feet above sea level, the ground floor
of the building had to be raised above the base flood elevation by 40 feet long, and 5 feet deep.
bringing in loads of dirt; OPPOSiTE PAGE: The Rooftop Bar at The Tremont “They stored rainwater that came down from the roof.
house is the only outdoor venue in Galveston to offer a panoramic Apparently, before Galveston had a pipe to the mainland,
view of the island. fresh water was a very valuable commodity, and they sold

36 | GALVESTON MONTHLY | MARCH 2019