Galveston Strand historic district
— red brick that held when the rest came down.
Not only on a wall.
Galveston Strand historic district, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“The Strand reads quietest at dusk, after the trolley tourists turn back toward the cruise terminal. Five blocks of brick and cast iron between 20th and 25th Streets, surveyed by the National Park Service in 1976. The Hendley Row from 1858 is the oldest commercial block standing in Texas. Two blocks south on Postoffice, the 1894 Grand Opera House still hosts a season. The gulf wind comes off the harbour and the warm brick lets it go slowly.
The place, in three passes.
The Strand National Historic Landmark District occupies five blocks of Strand Street between 20th and 25th, two blocks inland from Pier 21 on the north side of Galveston Island. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 by the National Park Service, which counted roughly forty contributing structures inside the survey area. The Galveston Historical Foundation, headquartered at 502 20th Street, oversees the preservation programme. The district sits between the 1904 seawall to the south and the cruise terminal at Pier 21 to the north.
Most of the district's surviving fronts are load-bearing brick with prefabricated cast-iron storefronts shipped from foundries in St. Louis, New York, and Brooklyn. The Hendley Row at 2010 Strand, built 1855 to 1858, is generally cited as the oldest surviving commercial block in Texas. The 1882 Hutchings, Sealy & Co. Building anchors the corner of 24th and Strand with a four-storey cast-iron façade. After the 1900 hurricane, federal surveyors found most of these iron and brick fronts intact while wood-frame structures two blocks over were splintered.
The Strand sets its calendar by two festivals. Dickens on the Strand, run by the Galveston Historical Foundation since 1974, fills the district on the first weekend of December with roughly 30,000 visitors over two days. Mardi Gras Galveston, founded in its modern form in 1985, runs parades along Strand and Seawall for the twelve days before Ash Wednesday. The 1894 Grand Opera House on Postoffice Street, two blocks south, runs its own season from October through May with roughly 80 performances a year.
