Morgan's Point Historic District

Along a quiet ridge above Galveston Bay, this district of single-family houses and their outbuildings grew between about 1890 and 1940, beginning with summer homes of the Bay Ridge Park Association. Most are frame buildings with long porches, built to face the water and catch the prevailing southeast breezes. Styles range from exuberant Eastlake and Queen Anne cottages of the 1890s to Craftsman and Foursquare houses, then Colonial, Georgian and Spanish Colonial Revival designs of the 1920s and 1930s. Landmarks include the masonry Georgian Revival Ross Sterling House, the Gribble-Hofheinz House built in 1896, the 1927 shingled Bullock House and the 1935 Thompson House designed by Houston architect Alfred C. Finn. Garages with staff quarters sit across the road on the inland side of lots. Hurricanes, air conditioning and later subdivision altered some properties, yet the district keeps its long lots, bay orientation and scale. It includes 46 contributing and 33 noncontributing buildings, and recent decades have brought renewed rehabilitation.