Description
Book SynopsisIn a 1963 novel, Edna Ferber compared the city of Galveston to Miss Havisham, the grey, mournful abandoned bride of Dickens'
Great Expectations. A thriving port city in the nineteenth century, Galveston suffered catastrophe in the twentieth as a deadly hurricane and shifting economics dropped a pall over its waterfront and Victorian mansions. Originally conceived as a requiem for the faded city,
The Galveston That Was (developed by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and funded by Jean and Dominique de Menil) instead helped resurrect the city. Architect-author Howard Barnstone, renowned portrait photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, and architect-photographer Ezra Stoller captured the soul of the city in
The Galveston That Was and as a result, inspired a major and successful effort to restore Galveston's historic architectural treasures. Many of the buildings pictured in the book have since been restored, and the pace of demolition slowed dramatically after the book's initial publication. In 1994, Rice University Press, in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and George and Cynthia Mitchell, published an updated edition of the book. This printing of the book, now under the Texas A&M University Press imprint, contains the text annotations and updates, plus Peter H. Brink's afterword, that were added to the 1994 edition.
Trade Review“This coffee table sized book contains countless beautiful photos and the fascinating histories of the great buildings that made Galveston and Texas what they are today.”- TopCountryMusic.com;
“Of all the books about Galveston, one of the best continues to be architect Howard Barnstone’s
The Galveston That Was, published 28 years ago. This poignant and vivid record of the great mansions and public buildings of the historic island city by the late Houston architect is credited as being a catalyst in the preservation and restoration movement in Galveston.”-
Houston Chronicle;
“This beautiful picture book about nineteenth-century Galveston architecture is also a book about how Galveston’s historic buildings were saved.”- Historic Preservation;
“The compelling power of
The Galveston That Was comes from both Barnstone’s text and the photographs by Cartier-Bresson and Stoller. . . .
The Galveston That Was probes the present on the same level as the past. It disquiets and unsettles us, asking us to establish ourselves, wherever we are, by building what we care about and caring about what we build.”-
Bloomsbury Review
