Carbuncles harming the island’s skin

When people first got serious about developing Galveston Island into a real town, it was understood that they would live and work there, too. So, just as they participated in the design and decorating of their new homes, they also made certain that their new town and their new businesses would be congruent.

That simple formula and the morality of increasing the aesthetic value of the new town rather than raping its natural beauty were what made Galveston a lovely and famous seaside barrier island.

It was financially prosperous. Its schools were stellar, its churches were many and its religious life was concrete. Its businesses made big money. Its residents lived well.

Galveston still looked, felt and operated like that when I was born there in 1940. It was that look and feel that had caused the founding families and their children and grandchildren to remain proud, participating islanders.

But, sometime just after World War II, uninvited outsiders with a different agenda came in, not to be residents or participants in the betterment of the island but solely to scrape profits off the top.

Oil company after oil company bought corners on Broadway, tore down the mansions that stood there and lined the entire promenade from the island’s entrance to Stewart Beach with tacky gas stations. Other junk building developers took that lead and added theirs as infill.

Then the state began the Dr. Faustus story, offering traffic lights if we’d let it widen Broadway. City government took the bait. The devil arrived. So much for the beautiful oak- and oleander-lined boulevard and the traffic that had only moseyed down it.

The University of Texas Medical Branch entered an exponential development so overwhelming that it became the primary reason Galveston’s middle class began to become scant, as hundreds of homes were torn down, one block after another, while poor people wandered in from elsewhere for state-aided medical care and the need of public housing.

There were no architectural controls in place to ensure the island kept its ambiance. They hadn’t been needed before. One ugly building after another was added by outsiders — people who wouldn’t have to look at the mess they were creating.

Founding families moved on, new ones took their places, but mostly with the plan that for them, Galveston would be just a stopping-off place, not their home for the remainder of their lives. Not the home for their children and grandchildren.

Their investments weren’t the same as that of the forefathers. The way they executed their plans validated that our suspicions about them were true. They were carpetbaggers.

Now there’s a new generation of carpetbaggers, posing as town decorators, tinkering with the look and the economy. For the most part, they don’t live here, nor do they plan to. The Dr. Faustus story has regenerated. The devil is alive and well.

The city has no obligation whatsoever to pander to or encourage the newcomers’ participation, yet for some reason the carbuncles they are adding to the island’s skin are being encouraged and are popping up everywhere.

Doesn’t anyone understand that sometimes the best progress is no progress, I wonder?

Ned Fox, who moved from Galveston some years ago, commented to me: “Could it be that the Galveston we think we remember — the Galveston we love — was never there at all?”

It was there just as we remember, Ned. It’s just not there anymore. We have let them have it.

Bill Cherry is the author of “Bill Cherry’s Galveston Memories.”