The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-11-14
The City and Its Business.


Galveston is located on an island of the same
name in Galveston bay, facing the Texas shore.
1t is the largest city in the State. The city was
first settled in 1887. 1t is handsomely laid out,
has wide and straight streets, and several public
squares parks and gardens. The streets run
ming parallel to West bay, the harbor, are known
as avenues and designated by the letters of the
alphaSet. beginning at the bay, while those at
right angles to the water are numbered. Special
names are assigned to some of the streets. Ave-
nue. A, or the wharf is mostly occupied by
wholesale houses. Avenue B. or '"rhe Strand y
and Avenue G, or Mechanic street, are also
largely devoted to wholesale houses. Avenue
ID, or Market street, for seventeen squares, is
given up to retail business, the hotels and banks
This is the main shopping street, and avenues E
and F are of the same character. The postofice
and United States scourt-house are at the inter
section of Avenue and Twentieth street, and
the custom house is near by. Avenue j, or
Broadway, is the principal residence street. It
is $50 feet wide, including ,36foot
foot sidewalks. Bath avenue, at right
angle to Broadway, is 120 feet wide Fremont
or Twenty third street. is the principal drive in
the city. and is maintained rs a shell road from
THE Strand" to the Gulf beach. With the ex-
ceptions named, the streets are 80 feet and the
avenues 20 feet wide including 16foot side
walks, and the blocks are uniformly 26O feet
wide and 900 feet long, with 20-foot alley run
ming lengthwise through the middle. The city
is built up from Sixth to Fortieth streets, and
from Avenue south to within two or three
blocks of the Gulf beach. The island is from
one and half to three and half miles wide,
and twenty eight miles long. The only blocks
paved are four or five blocks on Avenues B, G
and ID, with blocks of heart cypress The same
avenues are shelled from Tenth to Thirty second
streets, with clam shells from eighteen to thirty
inches deep Throughout the most thicky set
tied portions of the city the sidewalks are paved
with asphaltum concrete, brick or German or
English tiles Trees line the outer edge of the
sidewalks, oleander being the most numerous
Oeander Park embraces eighty acres and City
Park twenty-five acres, and there are three pub
lie gardens and six public squares. The bust
ness portion Of the city is built mostly of brick.
Among the public buildings other than
churches are a postohice, custom-house United
States court house, county courthouse,
county and city prison. city hail.
opera house. seven public halls, two libra
ries, two theaters. thirteen hotels and three mar
ket-houses There are thirty schools of all
kinds, fifteen church edifces, Roman Catholic
college (St Mary's) medical school, a convent
house OF refuge, an orphan asylum and three
hospitals. There are two other female schools
in the place. Galveston has number of daily,
tri weekly and weekly papers, 1t is a bship's
see of the Catholic Church. Two railroad
bridges, two miles long, connect Galveston with
the mainland, but no highway bridges.
The cotton business is represented by six cot
ton presses and many immense brick ware
houses. furnishing storage room tor 100000
bales or cotton, and covering an area of more
than five hundred acres In 1878 the assessed
value of real estate was $40, 600, 900, and the
bonded debt 100000. The population of Gal
weston more than trebed in the twenty years
preceding 1870, and the census Of 1880 gave it a
population of % 248, an increase in the decade Of
g. 435 1t is the third cotton port of the country,
more than one-tenth of the crop passing through
its warehouses. The number Of documented
vessels owned in the customs district of Calves
ton in 1873 was 197 with an aggregate storage of
93lO tons. Galveston is $40 miles west of the
mouth of the Mississippi.