Lead Photo Texas Historical Commission[Historic Property, Photograph THC_14-0905], photograph, Date Unknown, University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History; crediting Texas Historical Commission.
Photo #2 Texas Historical Commission [National Hotel Corporation], photograph, Date Unknown, University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History; crediting Texas Historical Commission.
The following text is from the United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service United States Department of the Interior
National Register of Historic Places Registration Form - E.S. Levy Building (2003)
Historic Name:: E.S.Levy Building
Other Name: National Hotel Building
Section 7 Page 5
The 1896/1900 E. S. Levy building is a five-story, three by six bay, rectangular plan, three-part vertical block that faces north on the southeast corner of Market (Avenue D) and 23rd (Tremont) Streets in the Galveston Central Business District, an urban commercial area. The transitional-style, load bearing masonry building was designed by Charles W. Bulger and named for the company's founder, and has a cast iron ground floor facade, terracotta detailing, two sheet metal cornices and a flat roof beyond the parapet. Historically, the building housed a department store on the ground level and professional offices on the upper floors. The building currently has ground floor commercial tenants and the upper floors are live/work space for artists. The building suffered inappropriate alterations in the 1950s yet recently these changes were reversed and the building was sensitively rehabilitated and reopened in 2001. The E. S. Levy Building retains a high degree of architectural and historic integrity.
Section 8 Pages 9-10
E. S. Levy and Company
The Levy Building was built by an early Galveston business. Abraham Levy and his partner Leopold Weis opened a men's and boy's clothing and furnishing's store in 1877, known as Levy and Weis. The store had a small twenty-foot frontage onto Market (Avenue D). Abraham Levy died in the early 1880s and his widow Esther Levy is listed as one of the business' proprietors along with Leopold Weis in the 1882-83 city directory. By 1888, the store changed its name to Levy & Cohen when Abraham Levy's son, Edward S. Levy entered the business with Robert I. Cohen. By 1890 the firm was known as E. S. Levy & Co. with Edward S. and Harry H. Levy as proprietors. The store was located at 2215 Market - the same location with the modest storefront where Abraham Levy began the business. In 1900, Edward S. Levy, Gustav G. Levy and Harry H. Levy filed incorporation papers and the business became known as E. S. Levy & Co. By 1901, Edward S. Levy left Galveston "to attend business interests in New York." In 1912 Gustav G. Levy sold out to Harry H. Levy, Sr.
Section 8 Pages 10-11
Charles W. Bulger
E.S. Levy & Co. purchased the Tremont Opera House in 1894 and hired architect Charles W. Bulger to design and supervise the construction of their new building. Construction began in October 1896 and was completed by May 1897. An article in the Galveston Daily News mentioned that the original intent of the architect was to "simply remodel the old Tremont opera house, but plans have recently been changed and the entire structure will be torn down with the exception of the wall of the lower story. The inside of this lower story will be completely removed. The building will be five stories in height of pressed brick, terra cotta and stone, and will contain exactly eighty-four offices beside the ground floor store rooms. The building will front sixty-five feet on Market and will run to the alley on Tremont. There will be a grand marble entrance, and everything will be strictly up to date." A newspaper article a year later stated that the building had a ground floor and three upper floors. Later newspaper articles announced the completion of the fifth floor.
The commission for the Levy building was the first large commercial project for Charles W. Bulger who had previously designed, built and remodeled many houses throughout the city that are now in the Strand, East End and Silk Stocking historic districts. After the Levy commission, Bulger's Galveston work included the 1906 Heffron building, a 1904 addition to the Clarke and Courts Building; and a 1904 reconstruction of the Marx & Blum Building (built 1890, architect
Nicholas Clayton), all in the Strand/Mechanic National Landmark Historic District. Charles W. Bulger practiced architecture in Galveston for twelve years before he moved to Dallas in 1904 to join his son and form the architecture office of Bulger & Son. Their Dallas firm was responsible for "over 100 churches (primarily Baptist) throughout the southwest as well as Dallas' first skyscraper, the Praetorian Building, completed in 1909."
E. S. Levy and Company's department store was located on the ground floor and had elevator access to the upper floors. Historic photographs (photo 2) show the building in 1899 with the fifth floor addition completed. Large plate glass display windows were added in front of and covered most of 1871 the cast iron facade. There is an entrance in the fourth bay on the 23 rd (Tremont) facade where a portion of one column is slightly visible behind a light pole. The main entrance to the department store was through the irregular column spacing on the north or Market Street facade. The entrance to the professional offices in the upper floors was in the first bay of the Market facade - the original Opera House entrance.
The building was home to E. S. Levy & Co. from 1897 until 1917. In 1917 the firm moved one block south to a newly constructed larger building at 2227 Postoffice Street where it remained until the department store closed in 1979.
Section 8 Page 11 - 13
Tenants
In addition to the E. S. Levy Company, the building was home to the offices of a number of prominent Galvestonians and T.xans. At the time of the 1900 storm, still the nation's most deadly natural disaster, the most notable tenant was the U.S. Weather Bureau's Galveston office headed by meteorologist Isaac Cline. It was his fourth station since joining the Weather Bureau in 1882. Weather instruments were installed and monitored on the roof and hurricane warning flags were flown there until both were whisked away by the high winds sometime on Saturday evening, September 8, 1900. Newspaper accounts from September 13, five days after the storm, state that "the United States weather bureau office lost all records of the storm after 6:30 p.m. [September 8]. At this moment the anemometer or wind gauge blew away from the top of the five-story [Levy] building. The wind reached a velocity of 100 miles an hour which was recorded by the wind gauge just before it was carried away. Whether it blew at a higher rate after that hour is not positively known, but the weathermen seem to think there were gusts that reached a velocity of a triffiing over 100 miles an hour velocity . . . the rainfall record was also lost. The rain gauge recorded a fall of nearly 2 inches up to 5 p.m., and was wrecked by the terrific wind that swept the apparatus from the roof of the Levy building. The rainfall, however, for the 24 hours, ending Sunday morning. was not exceptional and would not have been but an ordinary rainstorm had it not been for the hurricane accompaniment
Less dramatic tenants included architects, lawyers, aurists [diseases of the ear] and oculists [ophthalmologists], dentists, physicians, insurance agents, jewelers,and homeopaths. Charles Bulger had his office in the building and the Galveston office of Louis Sterling Green and Joseph Finger was also located there. Notable Galveston attorneys that officed there include: John L. Darrouzet a lobbyist in the Texas legislature; C. G. Dibrell, a judge of the 56th District Court; Marcellus E. Kleberg (1849-1913), served in the Texas Legislature, was Galveston City Attorney, City Commissioner and Trustee and a Charter member of the State Bar Association and a University of Texas Regent under Governor S.W.T. Lanham; and Oliver S. York who was the Galveston Postmaster as well as an attorney. Notable physicians included: John H. Coers
[aka Koers, Kohrs, Coers], a homeopathic doctor and 1840 graduate of the University of Germany who came to Galveston in 1865; Joseph F. Hurff a graduate of the Hahnemann Institute in Philadelphia; Ollye S. Hodges, an oculist and aurist and an 1897 University of Pennsylvania graduate.
When Levy's vacated the ground floor in 1917, Woolworth's became the ground floor tenant until 1923. A local clothing store, Ben Doherty and Co., leased the ground floor from 1921-1933. George W. Robertston's furniture company and its succession businesses and proprietors, Robertson-Shaw and Silkensen-Shaw, were the ground floor tenants from 1934 until the early 1950s.
The National Hotel Company
After 1908, the Levy building was owned and occupied by various interests of W. L. Moody, Jr. (1865-1954), a prominent and extremely successful Galveston financial magnate and entrepreneur. The vast Moody family holdings began with the purchase of a bank in 1889 and later included several banks including the National Bank of Texas, later renamed W. L. Moody Bank, printing companies, newspapers, and ranches. In 1927 W. L. Moody formed the National Hotel Corporation and its headquarters and offices were located on the third floor of the Levy building until the 1980s. In the 1920s, the building became known as the National Hotel Building
The National Hotel Company built several Galveston hotels: the Buccaneer (b. 1929, demolished 2001, Andrew Frasier, architect) and the Jean Lafitte (Andrew Frasier architect, extant). The company also "acquired a number of other hotels including the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, the Galvez in Galveston, Mountain Lake in Virginia, and the Hotel Washington in Washington, D.C. The 1949 Galveston City Directory lists the National Hotel Company as operators of the Hotel Buccaneer, Hotel Galvez, Hotel Jean Lafitte, Coronado Courts and The Seahorse in Galveston and Affiliated National Hotels throughout the Nation with general offices at the National Hotel Building, 2221 Market (Avenue D) in Galveston.
The National Hotel Company was associated with Conrad Hilton from 1931 until 1934. The Moodys helped rescue Hilton from near bankruptcy following the Great Depression and merged the Hilton chain with the Moody's operations to form the National Hotel Company. The merger failed and Hilton resumed his independent operations in 1934 with five hotels, and in 1938 he acquired the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco, his first hotel outside of Texas.
Section 8 Page 13
Changes to the building
The most significant change to the building's exterior was the brick modernization that was added in the 1950s. Fortunately, this alteration encapsulated the historic cast iron facade and Market Street entrance.
The appearance of the building's interior changed several times over the years with the most dramatic change occurring when air conditioning was added in the 1960s. Interior features such as doors, walls, ceiling, fixtures and equipment were removed and replaced with new modern partition walls of thin, stamped, pre-finished plywood. An acoustical suspended ceiling was installed at a uniform height of 8'-0" and the wooden floors were covered with carpet or vinyl. From the 1950s until 1983, the upper floors were configured with better offices situated next to the windows on the west and north. Anterooms such as reception areas and clerical offices separate these offices from the corridors. Across the corridor, in the building's interior, were toilet and equipment rooms. The central plant was located in the southwest corner of the building and the cooling tower was located on the fifth floor roof directly above the equipment room. The combination of heavy vibration, weight and water contributed to severe structural damage to that corner of the building.
A large skylight/light well, was located about two thirds of the way south of the grand entrance on the north facade, and was open to all floors from 1899 to at least 1931 (possibly until the 1940s) according to the Sanborn maps. This type of skylight - open to all five floors - is a very typical nineteenth-century Galveston architectural feature. It is presumed when the building was "modernized," the skylight was sealed below the fifth floor to allow for additional leasable floor
space. A smaller skylight was located adjacent to the staircase and was later used for an elevator chase. Hurricane Alicia struck Galveston in the summer of 1983 and severely damaged the large skylight of the Levy building. Tenants moved out following the storm and the building sat neglected and open to the elements until 1999 when ArtSpace Projects, Inc., a non-profit developer of affordable live/work space for artists, purchased the building. The owner worked with the local architectural firm Michael Gaertner and Associates to rehabilitate the building utilizing the investment tax credit program. The building was completed and formally opened in 2001 with ground floor commercial space and residential units above. The building is now called the National Hotel Artist's Lofts and is once again a contributing member of Galveston's Central Business District.