East End Historical District

When Galveston was the second-largest Gulf Coast port and Texas's dominant commercial city, its civic and business leaders built their houses on the island's eastern end. That neighborhood survived, and it is now one of the best-preserved concentrations of 19th-century residential architecture in Texas — more than 550 buildings, most of them Victorian, with Greek Revival survivors from the district's earliest days still standing alongside them. The grandest is the Bishop's Palace, completed in 1893 for politician and lawyer Walter Gresham. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976, the district is also historically significant as a hub of Black community life and institutions.