The story
I'm not a mapmaker.
I live in Galveston. A few years ago I got curious about what used to stand in the buildings downtown — the ones I walk past every day — and I fell down a hole I never really climbed out of.
The old surveys of the city are public records, and they are astonishing: every building in downtown, drawn by hand on its lot — and the saloons, hotels, liveries, and storefronts labeled with the names of the businesses inside. But they were never published as one map. They exist as dozens of separate sheets in public archives, each covering a few blocks, filed apart from their neighbors for over a century.
Look close and you can read the name of the business that stood where you had coffee this morning.
I'm not a professional artist, and I want to be honest about what this is: I didn't draw anything. I tracked down the original archive scans, worked out where every sheet belonged from street names and block numbers, and spent two years of evenings after work nudging them along the street grid until the seams met and the city came back together as one picture — at the full detail of the originals.
Nothing is redrawn or "restored." The foxing, the pencil corrections, some surveyor's beautiful handwriting — that's the real map. I just put it back together.
Thirteen years, one storm
Before, during, after.
1899
The last complete survey of the old city. Every building downtown drawn on its lot — the year before everything changed.
1900
The Great Storm. Still the deadliest natural disaster in American history. Much of what the 1899 map shows was gone by the morning of September 9th.
1912
The city, raised. Galveston lifted its buildings and streets behind the new seawall and rebuilt. The 1912 survey is the after to 1899's before.
I printed the first one for my own wall. A neighbor saw it and wanted one; then her sister did. That's the whole business plan, honestly — I wanted to share what used to be in these buildings, and it turns out I'm not the only one who cares.
If your building — your shop, your house, the bar where you watch the game — stood downtown in 1899 or 1912, it's on here, drawn on its lot. If it was a business back then, there's a good chance its name is on it too. If you can't find it, email me at [hello@galvestonmaps.co]. I've probably stared at your block for an hour already, and I'd love an excuse to go back.
— Brian Jones, Galveston, TX
With help from my son, Jacob.