For more than 150 years, the house at 2002 Church Street has watched Galveston change around it. Set just across from St. Mary’s Cathedral, the large peach-colored structure has welcomed generations of owners and boarders, each leaving their mark on a building that has evolved as much as the island itself.
The original home - a Greek Revival residence likely built in the early 1870s - once featured a double-front gallery and classic six-over-six windows.
Over time, the house expanded, and a later Craftsman-style addition partially obscured the original façade, introducing a side-facing front door and multi-light windows meant to “modernize” the look of the property. What were once tall walk-through windows designed to catch porch breezes have long since been closed in.
Even the records tell a layered story. Insurance Board documents list the home’s construction around 1881, yet an almost identical footprint appears on the 1877 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, suggesting the house stood at least a decade earlier - and has been part of the neighborhood’s fabric ever since.
Among the earliest documented owners and residents of 2002 Church Street were Dr. Gustave Frederick Weisselberg (1824-1891) and his wife, Maria “Mary” Anna von Groos (1835–1911). Born in Prussia, Weisselberg had built a respected medical career in Texas, serving as superintendent of the Texas State Lunatic Asylum and later practicing in San Antonio before relocating to Galveston.
Well known within the state’s German community, he played an active role in cultural and heritage organizations in Castroville, San Antonio, Austin, and Galveston. After settling on Church Street, he became president of the German Singers’ Association, helping organize Saengerfest competitions and community events that strengthened German identity on the island.
The Weisselbergs lived and worked at the address, sharing the home with Mary’s sister, Emma Buchner, while Dr. Weisselberg maintained his medical office on the property. Their time there was brief; he died in September 1891, only months after moving into the house, leaving behind a legacy woven into both the island’s medical history and its German cultural life.
Former New Orleans residents William Henry Seaman, Sr. (1834-1899) and his wife, Sophia T. Baldwin (1843-1923), became the next owners of the home in 1893. At the time, Seaman was working as a bookkeeper for Joseph G. Goldthwaite, who operated two coal yards downtown.
That same year, the family celebrated a milestone: their daughter Elizabeth (1867-1952) married Frederick William Catterall (1865-1958), who would later rise to prominence as a local banker.
By 1896, Seaman had transitioned into a new position as secretary of Lancaster and Ferris Gins and Compresses. Although the couple’s four adult sons - William Jr. (1868-1945), Charles Knight (1872-1937), George Mieure (1869-1964), and Eugene Cecil (1881-1950) - were still living at home, the Seamans began taking in boarders to supplement their income.
Among those early residents were Edward H. Rimmelin, a stereotype setter for the Galveston Tribune, and Wilfred Dudley Stearns (1867-1948), principal of Rosenberg School. Stearns lived in the home with his wife, Hope, and their four daughters until 1899, when the growing family moved out while expecting their fifth child.
When William Seaman died later that year, Sophia continued operating the property as a boarding house - her primary source of income. At the time of the Great Storm of 1900, the house was occupied by Sophia, her four adult sons, three male boarders, and a female servant.
In the hurricane’s aftermath, all four sons relocated to Houston in search of work, leaving Sophia in the home with a single remaining boarder, bookkeeper Alfred R. Holme. By 1902, she too moved to Houston to be near her children, purchasing a home on Travis Street where she lived with her youngest son, Eugene.
Irish immigrant Thomas McArdle (1845-1904) and his wife, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Stevenson (1855-1932), became the next owners of the property.
The couple had previously operated a boarding house at 1606 Market, but the Church Street home offered more space and greater potential income from boarders. McArdle worked as a marine engineer, while Lizzie managed the day-to-day operation of the residence.
Lizzie, widowed before her marriage to McArdle, had two children from her first husband: Joseph Edgar Hebert (1875-1925) and Mary “Daisy” Hebert (1878-1955). She and McArdle later welcomed two daughters together, Alice (1887-?) and Margaret (1895-1957).
Daisy married a successful businessman and established her own home on Broadway, while Joseph - a dredge engineer - and the younger daughters continued living with their mother and father.
In the spring of 1904, Thomas died unexpectedly during a trip to Austin, leaving Lizzie a widow for the second time. She continued running the boarding house as her primary means of support.
During the McArdle years, various family members occupied most of the main house, but they still took in three to five boarders at times. The property also housed Arthur Pine, a live-in servant, and in the rear building, an African American barber named Frank Tatum.
The next chapter of the home’s history began in 1912, when Francois “Frank” Joseph Fontaine (1844-1925), a naturalized immigrant from France, and his wife Celeste Eugenia Jones (1863-1921) purchased the property.
Living with them were their eldest children: Frank Jr. (1882-1932), who worked in insurance, and Berthe Louise (1884-1949), a music teacher at both Rosenberg School and Ball High School. Berthe was well known on the island as the leader of the local Euterpe Orchestra and frequently performed solos at weddings and special events.
Fontaine had operated a successful general contracting business that supplied oyster shells, soil, sand, and manure for construction projects across the island. After 1903, he shifted careers and worked as a clerk for several local businesses.
Architecturally, the property saw gradual changes during the Fontaine years. Between the 1899 and 1912 Sanborn maps, the lot was divided, with the west side developed into a separate apartment house.
A photograph in the Galveston Texas History Center shows that by 1919, the home had gained a substantial addition on its southwestern front corner - three stories at the front, stepping down to two stories at the rear.
The two-story outbuilding at the back of the lot, used alternately for servants or tenants, had also been widened. With the expanded space, the Fontaine family regularly shared the home with seven to nine boarders.
The Fontaines appeared as owners for the final time in the January 1920 census, when Francois was working as a collector for the Galveston Tribune. Living in the home at that time were a live-in domestic employee; lawyer John W. Campbell and his sons; insurance man J. R. Sayre; German immigrant F. C. Mundhanke, a cotton clerk; and two Greek immigrants - George Laros and Anthony E. Chengos - proprietors of the Island Oyster Café at 509 21st Street.
Greek-born James Kacoules Nicholas (1894-1961) and his young wife, Grace January, became the next owners of the Church Street property. Nicholas, who had immigrated from Greece, was one of the proprietors of the Two Brothers Saloon and Café, a business he co-owned with Anthony Chengos - already a boarder in the home.
Shortly after settling in Galveston, Nicholas legally Americanized his name from James Nicholas Kacoules, a common strategy among immigrants seeking stability and opportunity in the Texas business community.
Grace managed the rooming house, promoting it with an emphasis on the “modern” comforts of the era. In a time before air-conditioning, the couple advertised the home as “screened throughout,” a crucial feature that allowed sea breezes to circulate while keeping out the Gulf Coast’s relentless mosquitoes.
Their ads also highlighted the rare convenience of both hot and cold running water and the home’s easy walking distance to the downtown business district.
Because rooming-house accommodations were often shared to reduce costs, the Nicholases frequently noted that their furnished rooms were “suitable for two gentlemen,” a detail that appealed to clerks, laborers, and young professionals seeking affordable lodging near the heart of the city.
Anthony E. Chengos, Nicholas’s business partner and longtime boarder, purchased the property in 1924 and operated it as a second business until relocating to San Antonio. In 1928, he sold the home to Morris Melcer and John W. Gill, with Gill transferring his share to Melcer two years later.
In 1948, the house changed hands again when Emeline Christine Johansson (1896-1973), a Galveston native and single woman, purchased the property from Melcer.
Emeline and her nephew, Edwin, lived in the house behind the rooming house at 515 20th Street, a property owned by her sister, Irene Georgianna Johansson Wall (1893-1972).
Emeline continued operating the Church Street residence as a boarding house until 1950, when the city directory listed it as vacant. During this period, she likely undertook renovations; by 1952, she, Irene, and at least four other family members were living in the large home.
When Emeline moved to La Marque in the mid-1950s to work in a family business, Irene assumed responsibility for the property and welcomed new boarders, including Anna and Ernest Pouche, the latter a boilermaker at Todd Dry Docks.
In 1959, Irene returned to the home at 515 20th Street, and the Church Street property was sold to Alvin Kirsch, who owned it only briefly before selling it in 1961 to Miguel Saravia, a linotype operator at the Galveston Daily News.
Saravia sold the home two years later to Frank Peralez, an elevator operator at Moody House, who retained ownership until selling it to Sam Zafferblatt in 1972.
The rambling structure sat vacant from 1973 to 1975, but by 1976 it had reopened as Church Street Apartments, once again housing tenants in a mix of rooms and small units.
Today, more than 150 years after its earliest footprint appeared on a Sanborn map, the house at 2002 Church Street remains a rooming house. It is now operated by Lafayette Properties, whose office sits in the modest home at 515 20th Street - the same place where Emeline Johansson, one of the property’s most enduring stewards, once lived.
The connection between the two houses endures, a quiet reminder of the generations who shaped, expanded, and relied on this remarkable piece of Galveston’s history.