The Strand Once Met Wagons at Raised Sidewalks

The Strand once worked at a different height. When the district was busiest, its street sat four to five feet below today's level. Drays and wagons could pull up beneath the raised sidewalks and load at their edge.

That setup fit Galveston's commercial district from the 1850s into the early 1900s. The Strand stood near the wharf on Galveston Bay. Cotton and commission houses, banks, port traffic, and railroad connections packed business close to the harbor.

The 1900 hurricane tore away many cast-iron cornices and canopies. Afterward, fill raised the island and brought the street nearly level with ground-floor doors. Surviving red and stuccoed brick, cast iron, stonework, cornices, and canopies preserve pieces of the older streetscape.

The district holds National Register and National Historic Landmark status. Its listed architecture runs from Greek Revival through Late Victorian to Beaux Arts. What now looks like a row of ornate storefronts was also a piece of freight handling.