Grand Galveston style
Visitors can tour island bungalows and mansions, including the Sealy Hutchings House
One of the grandest and oldest homes on Galveston island is getting a new debut. The massive home that once housed banker Sealy Hutchings and his family joins the lineup of the Galveston Historic Homes Tour this weekend and next.
Last year’s tour was handled virtually because of the COVID-19 precautions, but for the Galveston Historical Foundation’s 150th anniversary — it began in 1871 as the Galveston Historical Society — organizers have shifted back to an in-person event with a lineup to match the occasion.
If you’ve ever driven through the island’s historic district and wondered what the homes look like inside, this is your chance to find out. The tour runs this weekend and repeats May 8-9.
The Sealy and Mary Hutchings House, a Queen Anne house with Classical Revival details, designed by architect George B. Stowe and built in 1896, is still largely in its original grandeur — despite having been turned into apartments sometime in the 1990s and later being returned to a singlefamily home. Located in the Kempner Park neighborhood, it’s directly across the street from another stately mansion — the home Sealy Hutchings grew up in.
Hutchings’ wife, Mary Emily Hutchings, was from the Moody family, and the couple raised their six children in the home, finishing out the third floor for their four sons.
Its 7,100 square feet is spread across
three stories, and the most recent renovation was conducted by its current owners, Thurman Nassoiy and Brent Robinson, who bought the home a year ago.
Other grand homes on the tour include the League-Kempner House, designed by architect Nicholas Clayton and built in 1893, which will be shown as a rehabilitation in progress, and the Bondies-Robertson House, one of the most prominent buildings in the East End Historic District.
Other substantial homes on the tour include the George and Sarah Prendergast House (built in 1886 and repaired and expanded after the Great Storm of 1900) in the Lost Bayou Historic District, and the Charles and Elise Eickholt House, a two-story Victorian/Queen Anne built in 1898 in the Silk Stocking Historic District.
In all, the tour features 10 homes. Normally, homeowners spruce up their homes and gardens, but this year, you’ll see yards a little barren or pruned back after the loss of palms and oleanders to the freeze.
Return to glory
When Robinson and Nassoiy bought the home on Avenue O, you could barely see it from the street because the grounds were so overgrown; the house then was an unimpressive pale yellow with white trim. Now it’s gray with white trim and redtrimmed window sashes.
The owners lost 30 peach and citrus trees to the freeze, but they have a healthy rose garden and have planted new gardenias that sit in pots on the home’s generous porches. They’re a gardening family, so there’s a vegetable garden and a butterfly station, too.
In the past year, the men worked on the home and handled virtual school for their daughter, 7-year-old Allye Nassoiy Robinson, all while keeping Robinson’s Tex-Mex restaurants — Marina’s in League City and New Braunfels, open.
Married seven years, the couple had moved from Midtown to League City before shifting to Galveston in April 2020.
Their suburban home was around 4,000 square feet, and they weren’t using much of it, so they thought they’d downsize to a beach bungalow.
After looking at 40 homes — and being underwhelmed by all of the bungalows they thought would be ideal — they scaled up. They were prepared to sign a contract for another larger house when their Realtor told them that the Sealy and Mary Hutchings House was back on the market.
One more walk-through and Robinson was sold.
“We were living in a cookiecutter neighborhood before, not far from the restaurant, but we’re really not cookie-cutter people,” Nassoiy said.
The Sealy and Mary Hutchings House is on the National Register of Historic Places, and it now has Galveston Landmark status, too. That’s why they jumped at the opportunity to be on the tour and host a History On Tap dinner — they want to share the home with others.
“My husband does everything big,” Nassoiy said. “If he’s going to do a grand gesture, it’s going to be huge. He also likes to garden, so he fell in love with the land. A small house was never going to work for him.”
Nassoiy, Robinson and their
daughter live on the home’s third floor, and they use the second floor’s four bedrooms and two bathrooms — split into two, two-bedroom suites — for short-term vacation rentals. The first floor is public space, including a music room, parlor, dining room, lounge and kitchen.
It’s the details that often impress the most in historic homes, and the Sealy and Mary Hutchings Home doesn’t disappoint.
Windows throughout the home — including curved ones —
have the original hurricane shutters, which are indoors and fold down in the lower portion of the wall. Many older Galveston homes have shutters, but they’re outdoors and simply fold out away from the window. These tuck into the walls, out of sight.
The grand foyer has original ball and fretwork detailing that repeats in the arched doorways in what is now the dining room.
Eight fireplaces — four wood burning and four coal burning — are sprinkled throughout the home, and all of them still have their original mantels, backing and tile in a variety of colors. Other details include modillions, dentil mouldings and interior millwork and hardware.
The first floor has a good deal of antique furniture, Victorian sofas, Queen Anne chairs and walnut hutches with intricate carving.
The home’s original kitchen is long gone — it was a servant’s kitchen and likely would have been unimpressive — and Nassoiy and Robinson say getting it up to today’s standards will be a future project that involves knocking out some walls that likely were erected a few decades ago.
“I have learned a lot and, thankfully, I have a husband who is more handy than I am,” Nassoiy said of the work they’ve done in the past year. “I watch a lot of YouTube videos and home improvement shows and do a lot of research online. We do some work ourselves and use professionals for things we don’t know how to do.”