GULF COAST
HENDLEY
ROW
2000-2016 Strand St., Galveston.
“THEY’RE FRIENDLY,” says Cheryl Jenkines, manager of Galves-
ton’s eclectic Hendley Market. She’s talking about the non-
corporeal habitués with whom she’s worked in Hendley Row,
the oldest commercial structure in the Strand Historic District,
since 1990.
It’s not surprising that Hendley Row is a hot spot for supernatural
activity. Completed between 1855 and 1858 for shippers and cotton
brokers, it was the town’s tallest structure during the Civil War; the
roof doubled as a Confederate lookout for Union ships. Galveston
and nearby barrier islands’ history have been laced with tragedy. It
was the site of a bloody Civil War fight, and serial epidemics of yel-
low fever decimated the populace. Hurricanes blast through regu-
larly; the 1900 storm left up to 12,000 casualties in the worst natu-
ral disaster in U.S. history. No wonder Texas writer Bryan Woolley
called Galveston “an old cemetery with a beach attached.”
The resident ghosts of Hendley Row represent aspects of Gal-
veston history. There’s the Confederate soldier seen on the roof46 texashighways.com Photos:Nathan Lindstrom