Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [5]
Where critics most faulted Galveston was for its lack of geophysical presence. The city occupied a long, narrow island that also formed the southern boundary of Galveston Bay, spanned by three railroad trestles and a wagon bridge. Its highest point, on Broadway, was 8.7 feet above sea level; its average altitude was half that, so low that with each one-foot increase in tide, the city lost a thousand feet of beach. Josiah Gregg, one of America’s most celebrated traveler-raconteurs, wrote in his diary in November 1841 of hearing about a past flood in which “this island was so completely overflowed that a small vessel actually sailed out over the middle of it.” He did not believe the story. He could see, however, that someday flooding might “even endanger lives.”
Regardless of one’s view, the fact was that Galveston in 1900 stood on the verge of greatness. If things continued as they were, Galveston soon would achieve the stature of New Orleans, Baltimore, or San Francisco. The New York Herald had already dubbed the city the New York of the Gulf. But city leaders also knew there was only room on the Texas coast for one great city, and that they were in a winner-take-all race against Houston, just fifty miles to the north. As of 1900, Galveston had the lead. The year before, it had become the biggest cotton port in the country and the third-busiest port overall. Forty-five steamship lines served the city, among them the White Star Line, which provided service between Galveston and Europe and in just over a decade would lose a great ship to hubris and ice. Consulates in the city represented sixteen countries, including Russia and Japan. And Galveston’s population was growing fast. On Friday, September 7, Isaac had read in the News the first brief report on the Galveston count of the 1900 census, which found that the city had grown 30 percent in only ten years.
Galveston now had electric streetcars, electric lights, local and long-distance telephone service, two domestic telegraph companies, three big concert halls, and twenty hotels, the most elegant being the Tremont, south of Isaac’s office, with two hundred ocean-facing rooms, fifty “elegant” rooms with private baths, and its own electric-power plant.
What most marked the city was money. As early as 1857 Galveston had achieved a reputation as a cosmopolitan town with a passion for fine things. One of its French chefs distinguished himself with a fusion of frontier and Continental cuisine that featured “beefsteak goddam a la mode.” By 1900, the city was reputed to have more millionaires per square mile than Newport, Rhode Island. Much of their money was vividly on display in the ornate mansions and lush gardens of Broadway, the city’s premier street.
The city offered everything from sex to sacks of Tidal Wave Flour. For the grieving rich, the giant livery and funeral works of J. Levy and Brothers offered a very special option: “A child’s white hearse and harness, with white horses.”
WINDOWS WERE OPEN in all the houses Isaac passed, and this imparted to the city an aura of vulnerability. Suddenly the noise of the sulky’s wheels seemed more jarring than reassuring. Ordinarily the great bathhouses at the end of the street would have brightened Isaac’s mood, but today they looked swollen and worn; they floated on cushions of greenish mist like castles from the mind of Poe.
Isaac drove until he had a clear view of the Gulf, then stopped the sulky. He stood, pulled out his watch, and began timing the long hills of water that rolled toward the beach. The