Message #103046

[Bianca]

All that changed on Sept. 8, 1900.

Early that morning, winds gusting at an estimated 125 mph pushed a wall of water 15 feet high across the unprotected city. Houses were splintered, and the slate shingles flying from the roofs "became whirling scimitars . . . eviscerating men and horses," author Erik Larson wrote in the book "Isaac's Storm."

"I have passed through the most trying, horrible thing in my life," one survivor wrote to his wife. More than 6,000 people died — at least twice as many as perished during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Between 1902 and 1904, a 17-foot-high seawall rose along the Gulf. When another catastrophic storm hit the city in 1915, fewer than a dozen people perished.

The city rebuilt behind its protective armor. But Galveston never regained its former prominence, its reputation that of a kind of low-rent Riviera.

From the '30s to the '50s, one writer observed, Galveston was "every bit as thoroughly controlled by the Mob as Atlantic City." Much of that alleged activity revolved around the famed Balinese Room, a nightclub and casino that hosted the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Jack Benny and the Marx Brothers.

The nightclub stood at the end of a 600-foot pier, just beyond the flood wall. As the stories go, by the time raiding police officers made it to the end, the doorman had tipped off the revelers, and roulette wheels were flipped over to reveal ordinary looking dining tables.

The Balinese Room didn't survive Ike.

A couple of years ago, the city hired a marketing firm to help improve Galveston's image. In interviews, tourists and even locals repeatedly cited "dirty beaches" and the town's "unclean feel."

The firm's report advised: "Flaunt the uniqueness of your island. Your beaches and island are not dirty — they are colored with stories, history and culture."

Ann Leocadi has fond memories of coming to Galveston as a child from Houston and staying at the old Jack Tar Motel, a working-class getaway on Seawall Boulevard, where her family enjoyed the swimming pool and beach, then ate at Gaido's, a popular seafood restaurant.

"Growing up, that's what I liked," says Leocadi, a prison social worker who now lives within sight of her old playground.

This March, the 15-story tower Emerald by the Sea — with green-tinted windows and unit prices ranging from $375,000 to $1.5 million — opened where Jack Tar once stood, and survived Ike almost unscathed.

Galveston was slow to follow its Gulf Coast neighbors in embracing the high-rise luxury condominium boom, but it's making up for lost time. "It's inevitable," Jim Gaines, research economist for the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, told the local newspaper. "You can see it coming."

The well-off and the poor coexist in Galveston, which has a poverty rate of 22 percent, just behind that of New Orleans.

Last week on The Strand, a trendy boulevard of shops and restaurants a couple of blocks from the harbor, Isaac Bennett, an arthritic 69-year-old, peddled his bicycle past the brick and wrought-iron facades. He was towing a wagon crammed with a crushed aluminum tub and twisted aluminum chair frames.

"I do it every time they have a storm," he said, flashing a nearly toothless grin. He'd sell the load, he said, figuring it would fetch $18, maybe $20.

Shotgun shacks and million-dollar beach homes felt Ike's wrath.