Moody Mansion
Today was touring houses day. We went to the Moody Mansion Museum, built at the turn of the century by a woman whose husband would not built one for her and he died. http://www.moodymansion.org/. It is four levels of 18 inch brick walls inside and out. Over these walls is built the inside of the house. The outside of the house has a nice arrangement of verandas to sit and watch the poor people go buy. It is made of sandstone and brick with a lot of metal fence work. The interior is furnished with oaks, cherry, mahogany, and other exotic woods. She mentioned that children were not allowed to eat with the parents except for Sunday’s, Mrs. said that they eat together each day. The bolsters around fireplaces were hand carved, much as the dining room table legs, buffet table and china cabinet. There are the normal luxury items, the windows that slide up and out of sight so you can walk through the opening out to the stairs to meet your invited friends. The tables are set with the finest silver and dinner plates with huge silver serving bowls. This house took 20 people to staff, all of whom lived on the ground floor, looked like nice accommodations to me it had gold leaf ceilings in the dining room. The food was made on this floor and a dumb waiter carried it to the serving floor, where the butler would service the guest and places it in the pantry because food platters were not allowed to set on the table, you had to request more to eat. The house also had an intercom system, voice pipe tubes and a flag device. The mansion was also fit with gas and electric lighting, when the electricity went out the help would light the gas jets. The stained glass window which greeted the visitors said, “Welcome ever smile” from Shakespeare, now I will have to figure out exactly what he meant?
Louis Comfort Tiffany lamp
These two elephant pictures are for Michelle!!
Bishop's home, white glass area is an conservatory in the side of the house.
The second home was the Bishops residence Galveston’s grandest and best known building, a Victorian castle. It had been owned by the Gresham family and sold to the dioceses for the Bishop. He lived in it from the age of around 50 and died in his 80’s. He did change the house by adding a chapel where the little girl’s room had been now has statuary and pictures of blessed events. Again the woods were exotic the one most liked was the curly pine, no longer a harvested tree; you have to find it in another house and use it in yours. The house didn’t have many original furnishings but the structure had colored stone, intricately carved ornaments, rare woods, stain glass windows. What was interesting is that they had like fifteen fireplaces. It was funny because he had a grand balcony staircase made, took 3 guys a year to make it. Then he found a fireplace he wanted and put it underneath this staircase and had no chimney area. This fireplace became the first gas fired fireplace in Galveston. The house even had air conditioning and the rooms were situated so that the gulf breezes would draft through. The structure is one the 100 most important buildings in America. Both these structures are worth the visit to hear their history.
Neat rock work!
Entry into the Bishops home.
A tug boat passing a head portion of a platform rig being overhauled.At noon we ate at Fishermen’s Warf Shirleen had a fine spinach salad with grilled shrimp, I a Poor Bo with crawfish.
We then went for walk at Moody Garden’s, of which they were not; it was flowers that decorated the area. Nice walk.
John, this is one for you. A model at the Museum.
We headed downtown to go to the Railroad Museum. This was a nice place to look at old trains, cars and memorabilia. There was a large display of silverware and place setting. The train station had plaster cast statues by Schwartz of New York, done in the mid 80’s. The people breathed through their noses with straws and then had the clothes layered with plaster. When dried they cut them off and plastered them back together.
I could not hitch my hip the way I used to be able to do, much like this young sailor.
We ate at The Steakhouse in the San Luis resort. It is a nice layout, to be different it is in a curved layout with nice room between tables three deep wide all done in rich dark woods. We split a Kobe rib eye steak, a massaged, beer feed animal. It was tasty, a little gristly for Shirleen, but a real delight. The only accompaniment was peeled asparagus with a smooth white sauce. We followed it a dessert, eruption, a freshly baked chocolate cake with warm chocolate inside, accompanied with raspberries and vanilla ice cream. We walked bake the two long blocks to wear this off. jerr
1 comment:
Hip hitchen looks like you just came out of a closet somewhere.
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