Galveston’s Guldmann House as grand as ever
Mikey Isbell spreads out old black-and-white photos on a round table in the foyer of her Galveston home. One shows a member of the Guldmann family, the original homeowners, posed with a horse in the front yard, another preparing for a game of croquet on the lawn.
Swank in its day, the Mission/ Craftsman-style home remains as stately as when it was built in 1916 for the Danish consul and cotton exporter Hans Guldmann, his wife, Marguerite, and their three children.
Isbell and her husband, Allen Isbell, a Houston attorney and preacher at the Broadway Church of Christ in Galveston, have called the Guldmann House home since 1984.
Every weekend they would visit their condo in Galveston both as a getaway and for Allen’s preaching duties.
One day, they were bicycling around town and saw the 5,500-square-foot home and a for-sale sign. They bought it.
Allen wanted to pass, but Mikey loved every blemish.
“I saw it differently. Allen thought it was a wreck,” she said. “It had a bad roof, and there were buckets in several rooms upstairs. It was kind of derelict.”
Now fully restored, the home has been on the Galveston Historic Homes Tour twice, and will be open again the next two weekends, May 6-7 and 13-14.
The 1916 Hans and Marguerite Guldmann House, as it is officially called, will be one of 10 structures on the docent-led tour, an annual event of the Galveston Historical Foundation.
The tour features architecture as varied as Greek Revival, Victorian and Colonial Revival, Mission, Craftsman and Neoclassical styles, built between 1880 and 1926. One house, a rehab in progress that was donated to the foundation, is an Aladdin House Co. “Fairmont” kit house. Sharing the house
Sunlight pours in through big windows and the enclosed porch just off the dining room is the Isbells’ favorite spot. The room is huge, about 30 feet by 40 feet, and was used in the early 1900s for events hosted by the Guldmanns, including parties and a lavish annual ball.
The Isbells — married for 59 years — use it, too. They’ve hosted holiday parties for 60 people from their church; more than 100 people from Mikey’s Master Gardeners’ group have gathered here as well. And there’s always a crowd for Mardi Gras, Fourth of July and Dickens on the Strand.
“Everybody counts on it, and it’s fun,” Mikey said of her holiday visitors. “It’s nice to share the house — it’s what you have it for.”
After Hurricane Ike damaged the Isbells’ church, they fixed up their garden house, installed air conditioning and, for nearly two years, more than 70 people showed up there for Sunday services.
There was a time when the couple operated Michael’s Bed and Breakfast while they lived in the home. Guests came and went, and the Isbells learned just how hard it is to operate an inn.
After her father’s death prompted frequent trips to West Texas to settle the estate, Mikey closed the B&B in 1998.
They’d never reconfigured the floor plan to accommodate the B&B, so taking it back to singlefamily use was easy.
When the Isbells bought the house, their fixer-upper oldhome checklist had all of the usual suspects: a bad roof, decaying walls, aging electrical wiring and plumbing and missing light fixtures.
Mikey found her artistic skills very useful. She made Tiffanystyle stained-glass shades for fixtures in much of the home.
A prior owner had given the kitchen a face-lift but in a color that made Mikey shake her head. It now has white quartz counters, a gray backsplash and pretty blue Silestone covering her island and a moveable butcher’s block.
A nearby butler’s pantry provides extra cabinet space and still has its original cast-iron sink — some 6½ feet long.
“You know, the beautiful part of this sink is, you can wash a kid, you can bathe the dog, you can ice down champagne, or you can even pot plants in it,” Mikey said — as if she’s done all four. High style
A grand staircase in the foyer is so striking that people often want to glide down the steps. Over the years, plenty of brides in cascading gowns have been photographed here, too.
In the huge foyer are antiques the Isbells have collected or inherited. A fold-down desk that Allen’s great-grandfather made holds an old tin-type of another ancestor. Apparently, the desk had been commissioned by a physician, but the transaction was never completed.
There’s a big round table in the center and a turquoise-tiled fireplace where Allen occasionally conducts wedding ceremonies. He’s done so many, in fact, that Mikey said his line is this: “I don’t need to rehearse. Just tell me where to stand; I know my part.”
Rooms upstairs are laid out for the needs of early-1900s life. There’s a huge master bedroom with a walk-in closet and a sizable bathroom. These details might not have been common in 1916, but the Guldmanns were an affluent family.
What once was Marguerite’s dressing room has a new life as Mikey’s closet.
The Guldmanns’ two daughters — Dorothy and Marguerite — shared a big adjoining bedroom, and across the hall is another room that was used for their schooling. A third bedroom was used by their son, Hans Jr., who came along about 10 years after his sisters.
The smallest room upstairs was reserved for the nanny, who had only a sink, a small bed and a dresser.
All over the home are pieces that come with stories. A cupboard was in a relative’s garage, a full-length mirror was found at a garage sale for $5. Her grandmother’s dining-room table looks small until you fold it out to more than 100 inches in length.
Art lovers, too
Mikey Isbell’s talents as a gardener aren’t lost on anyone. In the living room is a watercolor by Pam Heidt, who used to paint the home tour’s posters.
Commissioned by Allen Isbell as a gift for his wife, the painting captures a spot in Mikey’s garden showing a greenhouse and a pond in a lush outdoor setting. In Allen Isbell’s study are
three primitive paintings, all made by Clementine Hunter, the celebrated black folk artist. Unable to read or write, she taught herself to paint and used her canvases to document life on an early-20th-century Louisiana plantation.
Simple brush strokes appear in pieces such as “The Cotton Gin,” “Saturday Night People Drinking” and another piece showing a courtroom scene with a judge, audience and jury.
Mikey is also proud of offering new life to the rug that once ran down the staircase. She gave it to Ray Simpson of Simpson Galleries in Houston, who uses it to show people the quality in a 100-year-old carpet.
“When you turn it over, you’ve never seen such tiny little threads in your life. He said it was the finest example of carpet he’d ever seen,” she said.