Pier 25 - Union Station
27 December 1912: 1. 2415-2425 Water Street (now Harborside): Ullman, Stern & Krausse Wholesale Grocers, proprietors Moses Ullmann (1844-1929), Morris Stern (1864-1944), Charles August Julius “Chief” Krausse (1867-1927), 4 stories, built after the 1900 storm (See Panama Hotel); 2. 204 Rosenberg (25th): Panama Hotel, 4 floors, 1913 designed by Houston architects Lewis Sterling Green and Joseph Finger; (See Panama Hotel); 3. Rosenberg (25th) at Broadway (Avenue J): Rosenberg Statue [Potential LINK], 1900, sculptor Louis Amateis [who also sculpted the Confederate Monument in front of the County Courthouse in Central Park]; 4. 601 Rosenberg (25th): Post Office and Customs House, 3 floors, built 1886-1891; 5. 119 Rosenberg (25th): Union Station, 4 floors plus a two story crenelated tower in the Victorian Romanesque style, 1897; 6. 111 Rosenberg Avenue (25th): Pierce Fordyce Oil Company, an oil company producing refined oils, gasolines, lubricating oils, and greases, recent litigant in one of Texas’ most famous anti-trust cases, the Waters-Pierce Case.
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14 May 2005: Taken from an accessible street-level vantage point, although the match to 1912 might have been better if access to second floor levels was possible. Unfortunately, only ticketed passengers on cruise ships and service staff were allowed to enter there. 1. Pedestrian Causeway from Cruise Terminal Building; 2. 2502 Harborside: Cruise Ship at Pier 25 and Cruise Terminal Building built in 1927, 2 stories; 3. 202 Rosenberg (25th): Panama Lofts renovated from the Panama Hotel; 4. 2415 Winnie Street (Avenue G): First Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1959; 5. 823 Rosenberg (25th): Galveston City Hall and Fire Station, 4 floors, 1965; 6. 601 Rosenberg (25th): Galveston County Courthouse and U. S. Post Office, 6 floors, 1937; 7. 123 Rosenberg (25th): Shearn Moody Plaza, (formerly the Santa Fe Building), 11 floors, 1932 [replaces the 1897 Union Station, see Panama Hotel LINK for a view from the opposite direction]; 8. Pier 23-26: Cruise Ship Terminal Building (converted from portions of the Mallory Line Warehouse Building in 1990), 1927.
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Postmarked: 27 December 1912; Galveston, Texas
Stamp: 1c Green Ben Franklin #374 Flag Cancel To: Mr. Herbert Torrence River St. Saranac Lake N. Y. Message: Dear Herb, I am now down in T’exas where it is sunny all the time, go bathing to morrow and then to Houston from there to California will send address later. Walter Henadie In the 19th century the leading cause of death was Tuberculosis; as many as one third of those 15-34 and half of those 20-24 died of the disease. Public and private institutions turned their attention to finding a cure, and scientists began to systematically investigate the causes of the illness. In 1869 Jean Antoine Villemin demonstrated that tuberculosis was contagious and in 1882 Robert Koch identified a bacterium that was the causative agent. Although antibiotic treatment of infectious diseases was decades in the future, public health measures were developed which greatly reduced mortality. People began to use handkerchiefs to contain sneezes, banned spitting on the street, provided spittoons to hold sputum in bars and certain other public spaces, and the public generally became more health-conscious.
Tuberculosis sufferers needed to be isolated to reduce the spread of the disease, and doctors promoted cures to improve the ability of the heart to irrigate the lungs to reduce the severity of the disease. Sanatoriums began to spring up in Europe and America, and the best of these were located well above sea level where atmospheric pressure was less, the air cool, dry and untainted from urban pollution. One of the earliest sanitariums was founded by a physician and TB sufferer, Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau, at Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York. By 1912 the town of Saranac Lake was a mecca for treatment of tuberculosis and sanitariums were the main driver of the economy. Hotels and boarding houses were abundant and visitors stayed for weeks and months even through the frigid winters. |
The recipient of the postcard, Herbert Eugene Torrance, was the adopted son of Eugene Torrance and Ina Straw, who operated a grocery store in Saranac Lake, then a town of about 5,000 people. Herbert had just turned 16 and was very likely the delivery boy for his father. In this capacity he could have met Walter and, if Walter was much older, may have also assisted him as a general errand boy. Alternatively, if Walter was closer to Herbert’s age and in the spa with ill parents, they might have been drawn together as friends. Other hypothetical instances might be proposed, and none can be of greater strength than another. If Walter’s penmanship had been better, his actual identity might have been discovered, but his signature was too much of a scrawl to decipher. Apparently, he had left Saranac Lake for California, perhaps to return home or find the location of a different sanatorium. On the way he seems to have stopped at Galveston, a popular seaside resort, and something of a treatment center of its own, with fresh ocean breezes and a salubrious climate even in December. Of course, all this is guesswork, and Walter could have been someone altogether different.
At the age of 21 Herbert Torrance registered for the draft on June 5, 1917 in Saranac Lake, listing his vocation as bookkeeper, unemployed. About a year later he traveled to the closest urban center at Burlington, VT about 50 miles east of Saranac Lake to enlist as a seaman 2nd class and was sent to Pelham Bay Park Naval Training Camp on Long Island Sound in The Bronx, but after 4 months was hospitalized and discharged within a month, serving a total of 146 days. In 1920 he had found work as a salesman and boarded at Number 274 38th Street in Manhattan. His mother Ina died in 1925 in Saranac Lake, and later that year his father married Emma Rosetta Clark in Oxford, Oakland County, MI where she was from. Eugene and Emma seem to have spent part of the year in Saranac Lake and part of the year in St. Petersburg, Pinellas County, FL, a pattern begun when he was married to Ina. Herbert died in 1937, and was buried in Pine Ridge Cemetery in Saranac Lake near his mother. Herbert’s father died in 1947 and joined his son and first wife in Pine Ridge Cemetery, leaving room on the Torrance Family tombstone for his second wife, but Emma Torrance died in St. Petersburg, FL in 1971 and was buried in Royal Palm South Cemetery there. |