The Strand National Historic Landmark District

A German immigrant jeweler named the street after London's Strand, thinking the association would lend his shop more prestige — and the name stuck. What grew along it became known as the "Wall Street of the South": a dense run of Victorian commercial buildings close to Galveston's harbor, home to the state's five largest banks and the conduit for 60 percent of Texas's cotton exports. Listed on the National Register in 1970 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976, the district survived the catastrophic 1900 hurricane, a long economic decline, and Hurricane Ike. It's still there.