About this property
The Grand Galvez Resort & Spa is a historic 226-room resort hotel located in Galveston, Texas, United States that opened in 1911 as the Hotel Galvez. It was named to honor Bernardo de Gálvez, 1st Viscount of Galveston, for whom the city was named. The hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 4, 1979. It is a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Hotel Galvez is a six-story building made of stucco-covered brick, built in the style of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. It features distinctive elements of this architectural style, such as mission parapets, plastered walls, and a Ludowici tile roof. The main building features two five-story wings jutting toward the Gulf of Mexico. These wings include round archways and windows in the Spanish Revival style. The hotel's original main entrance faced north, away from the Gulf, and featured a porte cochere. Preceding the Hotel Galvez overlooking the beach was the Beach Hotel, designed by Nicholas J. Clayton and completed in 1883. It was located on Tremont Street. The Beach Hotel was similar in style to some of the grand hotels built in the 1870s, the San Francisco Palace, the United States Hotel, and the Grand Union Hotel. Clayton equipped the Beach hotel with a mansard tower, a feature that he has also installed on the St. Mary's Infirmary in 1874. The three stories and three pavilions of the Beach Hotel rested on a base of 300 piles, arranged in three octagonal structures surrounding a rectangle, decorated in a polychrome-stick style. The Beach Hotel operated until 1895, followed by brief re-openings in 1896 and another renovation by Georg Korst in preparation for another opening in 1898. However, a boiler room fire on July 22 consumed the entire hotel. Firefighters saved a restaurant and a small shop on adjacent blocks, but flames crossing another street spread to another shop and a restaurant, which were total losses. The Beach Hotel was never rebuilt. The 1900 Galveston hurricane struck Galveston on September 8. Storm surge reached fifteen feet. At one point during the storm, the wind shifted to blow from the north, pushing the tides in Galveston Bay back into the city, as Galveston received surging water from the north and the south. About 6,000 people died in Galveston alone. Within days after the storm, the Deep Water Committee convened to consider plans for protecting the city from hurricanes. The three engineers on the committee recommended a concrete seawall to protect the city from storm surge. By 1903, Galveston was selling infrastructure bonds and raising revenue from authority granted by the State of Texas. Construction on the seawall began in February. The seawall was built to seventeen feet in height, flared from a fifteen-foot base to five feet at the top.
Location
Categories
Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Everything a full report reveals about Galvez Hotel
This page lists Galvez Hotel. A full Aubrey report for an address near it pulls together this listing alongside battlefield records, land patents, and every other historical record within a chosen radius:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Questions about this property
When was Galvez Hotel listed on the National Register?
Galvez Hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 3, 1979.
What type of historic resource is Galvez Hotel?
Galvez Hotel is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for Galvez Hotel?
The period of significance for Galvez Hotel is recorded as the industrial era, specifically around 1911.
Can I research the history near Galvez Hotel?
Yes. Aubrey Research reports search National Register listings, battlefield records, land patents, and other primary historical sources within any radius of a US address. A report for an address near Galvez Hotel will include this listing and all other historical records in the area.
More in Galveston County
Historic places, battles, and census history across Galveston County.
Explore GalvestonCounty ›Research the history near this site
An Aubrey US report for an address near Galvez Hotel will include this listing alongside battlefield records and other historical sources within your chosen radius.