Historic Galveston House Reborn After Hurricane Ike

HISTORIC GALVESTON HOME REBORN

The glory of the home’s entry is its ball-and-dowel wood fretwork over the transom and hall. Pam was able to save the original floors caked with mud from Ike by following Bill’s advice. Instead of washing the mud out with water, she let it dry a month, then swept it away. In the living room doorway: Emma Houston.

Even though the 1898 Victorian house in Galveston’s East End Historic District is raised off the ground, it took in about 2 feet of salt water from Hurricane Ike’s storm surge. One year later, it looks none the worse for wear. A “Historical Galveston Rebirth” banner hangs by the front door.

Pam Houston and Bill Beveridge in the garden by her guest cottage where Bill moved after his apartment was destroyed by Hurricane Ike. A brass plaque commemorates the water level from Ike’s storm surge.

A YEAR AFTER HURRICANE IKE FLOODED HER NEIGHBORHOOD AND HOME WITH SALTWATER , ONE GALVESTON RESIDENT DISCUSSES THAT LONG NIGHT LAST SEPTEMBER, THE ROAD TO RECOVERY, AND WHY SHE STILL LOVES HER ISLAND HOME.

By SARAH GANDY

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Photography by MIRO DVORSCAK

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fter 40 years of living in Houston, Pam Houston was ready for a change. She had

lost her husband, Houston PR man and design writer Sam Houston, to cancer; friends had moved; children had started their own lives around the country.

“I was ready to get out of the city—there was really nothing keeping me there anymore, but I didn’t know where I wanted to go,” says Pam. “On a lark I decided to come down to Galveston with a friend to see a house that she was looking at buying. After lunch I thought ‘Well…living here could be fun’.” Pam looked at one house—an 1898 two-story in the East End Historical District and her decision was made. She would make a new home for herself in Galveston.

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“It was the first and only house I looked at,” says Pam. “I saw it at 3 on a Saturday afternoon and by Monday they’d accepted my offer.” Within weeks the sale went through, but it’s with a certain amount of amazement that Pam remembers signing the papers to purchase the house. “Do you know when I closed on this house?

September 13, 2007.” Exactly one year before the worst hurricane in over a century would strike the Texas coast.

After she closed on the house, Pam enlisted the help of friend and noted Houston interior designer Herbert Wells to guide her in her choices of paint and fabric. “Wainscoting Gray” went on living and dining room walls, wood trim was painted “Marshmallow” and for the front door, Wells specified a sassy coral-red “Geranium.”

For the large antique sofa in the living room, Wells blessed Pam’s choice of a bright floral print fabric by Brunschwig & Fils. Once the cosmetic redo was complete, Pam settled comfortably into the house and grew to love Island life.

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM

Fast forward 364 days to Friday, September 12, 2008. Weighing the mixed messages from the media and local officials with her own suspicion that Category 2 Ike will continue to head east, Pam turned to an old friend, Bill Beveridge, who had helped her board up her house. “I said ‘If you’ll stay with me, I’ll stay’. He said ‘I stay for them all.’”

On Friday morning the eye of the storm was still 18 hours out; the skies were blue and there was no significant wind, but when Bill took his dog for a walk that afternoon he saw that water was rising into the street near Pam’s house. He decided they should both seek higher ground several blocks away at a weekend house that he managed.

“I don’t think anyone closed an eye that night…”

“At 7 o’clock Friday night we lost power,” recalls Pam. “From then on it was totally dark. I don’t think anyone closed an eye that night. You would hear terrible crashes and not know where they were coming from. After the eye went over (at approximately 2 a.m. Saturday) that was the scariest part. The wind was so terrible it sounded like someone was screaming for four hours.”

Pam’s thoughts stayed with her new home. “From the house we were in we could occasionally see the black flood waters come up over the fence outside. Then they’d subside a little. Then they’d come back higher. I knew there had to be water in my house,” says Pam. NO TIME TO MOPE

By daybreak, with the worst of the storm passed, Pam tried to make it the four blocks to her home, but the flood waters still covered the road. “It took me two trips before I could get all the way to my house. And once I got here I didn’t have the nerve to go in.”

Pam asked Bill to make the trip with her so that she wouldn’t have to face the scene alone. By the end of the storm, two feet of gray, muddy saltwater had flooded the inside of her house (though the total surge for the neighborhood was approximately 6 feet, Pam’s house, like most on the Island, is raised up several feet). In addition to an extensive layer of mud, the waters had flipped her

Pam’s collection of mercury glass rests on an 18th-century lowboy that belonged to Pam’s maternal great-grandfather.

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The dining room chairs upholstered in fabric chosen by Houston designer Herbert Wells were soaked with muddy saltwater from Ike. Every day Pam hauled them out into the sun, then moved them inside at night. The upholstery survived well. The 19th-century corner cupboard was Pam’s maternal grandmother’s. Above the bookcase, at right, is “Night Heron” by Galveston artist Rene Wiley. Yellow vases on the chest, at left, are from Cool Stuff, a Houston shop whose owners fled Hurricane Katrina.

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large, long antique couch with the Brunschwig & Fils fabric she so loved and rammed it into the wall. Her refrigerator had also been turned on its back and wedged in a corner.

“It was a disaster,” says Pam. “But you take it in for a moment and after that it’s straight to work. There was really no time to mope.” Bill agrees, “I never had Ike-itis like some people did, where you’re distraught and traumatized. I just got to work.”

Galveston had no electric power or fresh water after the storm. Bill set up a grill on the street and cooked breakfast and dinner for about 50 people a day—to whomever showed up—for about a month. The food came from freezers in the weekend houses he manages; the homeowners asked him to use the food. “We were eating better than the mayor and others,” Bill recalls with a smile. “We even had a few restaurant owners there.” Later, the Galveston Daily News honored Bill with the Unsung Hero Award 2009 “for unselfish efforts in making Galveston county a better place to live.”

THE ROAD HOME

Though the decision to stay is a controversial one, neither Pam nor Bill have any regrets, and in fact found many things to be grateful for following the storm. While many homeowners were denied access to the Island for two and a half weeks, Pam was able to get straight to work, saving nearly all of her family’s antiques (in the end only the antique sofa was lost), and preventing mold from infesting her house. Even upholstered furniture was salvaged beautifully.

“My dining chairs, my loveseat— every morning I would haul them out into the sun. Every evening I would haul them back inside before the 6 p. m. curfew,” says Pam. “I did that every day for a month and now you can’t tell that anything happened to them.”

Bill’s quick thinking lead to several more success stories around the house.

“The first thing I wanted to do was clean the mud off the floors,” says Pam, “But Bill said ‘No, let them dry first’.” According to Bill, who had experience with a low-lying lake house

A glorious stained window in a niche off the kitchen survived Ike’s winds.

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growing up, cleaning the fresh, sticky mud off the floors at that point would have required large amounts of water—essentially re-soaking the hardwoods and causing them to cup. Once the mud was dry a month later it could be easily swept up with a damp cloth. “The floor never buckled,” says Pam. “There’s still some mud between the boards if you look closely, but I kind of like that. I’m careful not to vacuum it up—it gives it character.”

Antiques filled with linens and books presented an additional dilemma—when the fibrous contents flooded they caused the drawers to swell shut, a potentially fatal problem for both the antiques and contents. Bill helped Pam carefully remove the backs of the furniture, allowing the contents to be removed and the antiques to air out.

In the months that followed, recovery continued including an extensive kitchen remodel which Bill helped her with (the pressed wood cabinets and appliances did not fare well in the flood), replanting of most of the salt-soaked landscape, and an entire redo of the lower lying guest house. Pam made an offer to Bill, whose rental house had been damaged in the storm—if he wanted to renovate the guest house he was welcome to live in it. And so the friendship continued as both Pam and Bill each helped the other recover from the storm.

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ABOVE: The storm-tossed kitchen had to be totally redone, including new appliances. Pam chose simple replacement materials. Bill installed cabinets from Home Depot and laid the black-and-white tile. Pink flamingo lights, along with a growing collection of flamingo glasses and drink stirrers, remind visitors they’re on the Island.

In Bill’s cozy living room, a framed flag above the console is the one his father, a Major in the U.S. Marines, captured with the men under his command at Guadalcanal in World War II. On the table sits Bill’s award for heroism, a glass trophy the Galveston Daily News gave him inscribed “Unsung Hero Award 2009.” He manned a grill on the street for about one month after Ike, feeding Galvestonians who had no food, electricity or potable running water.

A BRIGHT FUTURE

These days a “Historical Galveston Rebirth” banner hangs outside Pam’s quaint front door and a bronze plaque commemorating the waterline from Ike hangs a few feet below an older plaque commemorating the house as a 1900 Storm Survivor. “These Galveston houses have been through a lot,” says Bill, “and they can handle a lot.”

Though Pam’s spirit marches ever forward, she’s found unique and even charming ways to commemorate the events of the last year throughout the house. An avid art collector, many of Pam’s latest pieces reflect the storm and recovery. A painting by local artist Rene Wiley commemorates the last day that the damaged Murdoch’s Bathhouse was standing over the Gulf. A wrinkled, flood-ravaged black and white coffee table book titled The Galveston that Was now hangs poignantly in a silver shadow box frame in her kitchen, col-

lages of objects found post-Ike by Martha Terrill hang in the entry, and a large color-infused painting over the fireplace was a recent find at the local storm damaged shop Antiques Warehouse.

In looking towards the future Bill says, “I think the Island will be better than it was before. People are doing things to their houses and their yards that they wouldn’t have before. Businesses are retooling and coming back stronger.” Pam agrees: “I’ve loved living here. I love this house, the back porch and the garden. I love the whole lifestyle on the Island. There’s no traffic, I can go to the beach, there are so many fun, nice people here, and there’s so much to do.”

Pam may be the ultimate Island convert, having only found a reason to cross back over the causeway five times since moving here.

“I moved here on a whim in September 2007, and I’ve never looked back.”

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PAM’S FAVORITE SOURCES FOR LOCAL ART AND ARTIFACTS ANTIQUE WAREHOUSE 423 25th Street, 409.762.8620 BIG HOUSE ANTIQUES 2212 Mechanic, 409.762.0559 COOL STUFF (Houston) 1718 Westheimer, Houston, 713.523.5222

ABOVE: Bill’s dog Max enjoys the morning sun in the guest house. Bill, who was an

DESIGNWORKS 2119A Postoffice, 409.766.7095

antiques dealer for years in Houston, now manages Island Relics in Galveston.

TOP RIGHT: The back porch affords a pleasant view of the garden. The vintage tablecloth is

ISLAND RELICS 911 22nd Street

from Island Relics.

RENE WILEY GALLERY 2128 Postoffice, 409.457.7669 WAGNER SOUSA MODERN ART (currently represents Loretta Trevino) 404 25th Street, 409.392.3331

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RIGHT: A new pergola shades the tiny garden at the rear of the house. Ike’s saltwater killed most of the plants, but Pam replanted the pots with cheerful blooms as soon as she could after the storm. The garden will be on tour Oct. 10-11 for the first ever East End Fall Garden Tour in Galveston. See more details in

Houston House & Home’s Oct. 09 issue.