Powhatan House

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The 1847 Powhatan House became the property of the Galveston Garden Club, its current owners, in 1965. Over time, the garden club restored the house to its 1893 appearance, including Victorian furnishings and a garden planted in oleanders.

The house, located at 3427 Ave O, is one of the oldest homes on the island and was among the first of a series of successful restorations in Galveston. These restorations became the focus of an active tourist industry, replacing the city’s waning trading activity. The Galveston Garden Club uses the house and grounds for its monthly meetings, for periodic fundraising sales and events and educational programs. It opens the house for use by civic organizations and private events rentals.

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History of the House
The Powhatan House was built as the home of Col. John S. Sydnor, a prominent cotton merchant, early mayor of Galveston and financier. The Powhatan House is an unusually sophisticated example of Greek Revival architecture in Texas. The construction of the Powhatan House and its change in use over many years of occupancy mirrors the history of Galveston’s development and eventual decline as Texas’ leading mercantile and cultural center.

Sydnor named the 24-room house after the Indian tribes in his native Virginia. The original Powhatan House had a six-column portico, a characteristically Galvestonian raised basement or ground floor and five acres of gardens planted with oleanders which were to become a feature of the island's gardens.

The house itself was largely the result of Sydnor’s trading ventures. It was built of lumber, windows, sectional columns, hardware and well-crafted cyma recta mouldings shipped from Maine in the otherwise empty holds of cotton vessels returning from the northern ports. The fabrication of houses for Texans, in the seaports of Maine, was one of the dominant elements of trade balance between Galveston and the North. Two other houses still standing in Galveston, the Menard House and the Williams-Tucker House (see National Register submission “Samuel May Williams House” July 14, 1971) were also built of parts fabricated in Maine.

In 1866, Sydney sold the house to a Mr. Bolton, who attempted to operate schools and a military academy in the house’s spacious rooms. All of his efforts proved unsuccessful, however, and he converted the Powhatan to use as his private home.

In 1881 the house was purchased by the City of Galveston to use as the island’s first orphanage. In 1893, a new orphanage was built ,and the Powhatan House became the property of Carolyn Willis Ladd, who had the house moved from its original location between 21st and 22nd Streets and M and N Avenues, to its present location.

Under the supervision of the architect W.H. Tyndall, the house was divided into three sections and remodeled into three separate houses on contiguous lots. Each house was elevated on a 10-foot-high brick basement containing a kitchen and servants’ quarters.. The central portion continued to be known as the Powhatan House or the “Main House.” Tyndall extensively modified the interiors, replacing original mantels with Victorian pressed-brick facings, new staircases and a variety of diamond pane and two over two light windows.

In 1903 Charles Vedder, a prominent Galveston cotton merchant, purchased the main house, which had been only slightly damaged by the disastrous flood and hurricane of 1900. The Vedder family occupied the house at the time of the 1907 grade-raising. The Vedders lost their basement kitchen and breakfast room to the inundation of sand pumped from Galveston Bay. The Vedders added a wing to the east of the house to replace the buried rooms.

Vedder was appointed by Theodore Roosevelt as United States Cotton Commissioner and was a member of the Galveston Cotton Exchange, which, together with the Wharf Commission, virtually controlled all of Galveston’s trading activity. Vedder’s wife, Florence, was the granddaughter of General George Heath Flood, who had been U.S. Minister to the Republic of Texas in 1839.

In 1927, the British government leased the house for use as its consulate. In 1935 the Vedders sold the house to J.W. Oschman, who occupied it until 1960 when the Forrest Dyer family purchased it.

Five years later, the Powhatan House became the property of the Galveston Garden Club.