Throughout the long and colorful history of Galveston, no name has embodied the "Spirit of the Island" quite like the name Maceo. Two penniless Sicilian immigrants rose from modest beginnings to lead an entire city to prosperity, yet the nature of their industry and its abrupt and embarrassing end resulted in a legacy cloaked in stereotypes and rumor. For nearly forty years, Sam and Rose Maceo ruled a far-reaching underground economy of illegal booze and gambling but used their influence to infuse the "Free State of Galveston" with glamour, fame and fortune--a vision later used as a template for Las Vegas. The island city responded in kind, and its acceptance of the Maceos insulated their empire for decades. Pairing personal interviews of living descendants with her own meticulous research, Kimber Fountain lifts the veil on the Maceo family's closely guarded heritage.

Throughout the long and colorful history of Galveston, no name has embodied the "Spirit of the Island" quite like the name Maceo. Two penniless Sicilian immigrants rose from modest beginnings to lead an entire city to prosperity, yet the nature of their industry and its abrupt and embarrassing end resulted in a legacy cloaked in stereotypes and rumor. For nearly forty years, Sam and Rose Maceo ruled a far-reaching underground economy of illegal booze and gambling but used their influence to infuse the "Free State of Galveston" with glamour, fame and fortune--a vision later used as a template for Las Vegas. The island city responded in kind, and its acceptance of the Maceos insulated their empire for decades. Pairing personal interviews of living descendants with her own meticulous research, Kimber Fountain lifts the veil on the Maceo family's closely guarded heritage.

A colorful history of the island city on Texas’s Gulf Coast and its survival through times of piracy, plague, civil war, and devastating natural disaster. On the Gulf edge of Texas between land and sea stands Galveston Island. Shaped continually by wind and water, it is one of earth’s ongoing creations, where time is forever new. Here, on the shoreline, embraced by the waves, a person can still feel the heartbeat of nature. And yet, for all the idyllic possibilities, Galveston’s history has been anything but tranquil. Across Galveston’s sands have walked Indians, pirates, revolutionaries, the richest men of nineteenth-century Texas, soldiers, sailors, bootleggers, gamblers, prostitutes, physicians, entertainers, engineers, and preservationists. Major events in the island’s past include hurricanes, yellow fever, smuggling, vice, the Civil War, the building of a medical school and port, raids by the Texas Rangers, and, always, the struggle to live in a precarious location. Galveston: A History is an engrossing account that also explores the role of technology and the often contradictory relationship between technology and the city, providing a guide to both Galveston history and the dynamics of urban development.

A local historian recounts nearly seventy years of seduction and scandal along the Texas Gulf Coast in this lively chronicle of Galveston’s notorious past. Known today as a colorful resort destination featuring family entertainment and a thriving arts district, Galveston, Texas, was once notorious for its flourishing vice economy and infamous red-light district. Called simply “The Line,” the unassuming five blocks of Postoffice Street came alive every night with wild parties and generous offerings of love for sale. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, The Line was a stubborn mainstay of the island cityscape until it was finally shut down in the 1950s. But ridding Galveston of prostitution would prove much more difficult than putting a padlock on the front door. In Galveston’s Red Light District, Texas historian Kimber Fountain pursues the sequestered story of women who wanted to make their own rules and the city that wanted to let them.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Galveston was a beacon of opportunity on the Texas Gulf Coast. Dubbed the "Wall Street of the Southwest," its laissez-faire reputation called those hungry for success to its shores. Led by brothers Salvatore and Rosario at the height of Prohibition, the Maceo family answered that call and changed the Oleander City forever. They built an island empire of gambling, smuggling and prostitution that lasted three decades. Housed in their nightclubs frequented by stars like Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington, they endeared themselves to their Galveston neighbors by sharing their profits, imitating crime syndicates in their native Sicily. Though certainly no saints, the Maceos helped bring prosperity to a community weary from a century of turmoil. Discover the history of Galveston's famous crime family with authors Nicole Boatman, Dr. Scott Belshaw and Texas historian Richard McCaslin.

The Galveston Architecture Guidebook will be invaluable to all those who visit Galveston. Historic preservationists, scholars of nineteenth-century material culture, architects, and historians will be fascinated by the broad range of buildings and urban conditions it documents. Finally, anyone interested in Galveston or the Gulf Coast will find in this book a wealth of information.

In a 1963 novel, Edna Ferber compared the city of Galveston to Miss Havisham, the gray, mournful abandoned bride of Dickens' Great Expectations. A thriving port city in the nineteenth century, Galveston suffered catastrophe in the twentieth as a deadly hurricane and shifting economics dropped a pall over its waterfront and Victorian mansions. Originally conceived as a requiem for the faded city, The Galveston That Was (developed by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and funded by Jean and Dominique de Menil) instead helped resurrect the city. Architect-author Howard Barnstone, renowned portrait photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, and architect-photographer Ezra Stoller captured the soul of the city in The Galveston That Was and as a result, inspired a major and successful effort to restore Galveston's historic architectural treasures. Many of the buildings pictured in the book have since been restored, and the pace of demolition slowed dramatically after the book's initial publication. In 1994, Rice University Press, in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and George and Cynthia Mitchell, published an updated edition of the book. This new printing of the book, now under the Texas A&M University Press imprint, contains the text annotations and updates, plus Peter H. Brink's afterword, that were added to the 1994 edition.