Personal stories and information from 12 Secret Things In Corpus Christi You Didn’t Know About
There were several things we came to enjoy about Corpus Christi even though we had made several trips previously. It has several intriguing sights that appeal to many tourists, such as memorial homes, a Harbor Bridge and the old Lexington WWII Aircraft Carrier Museum, which is rusting away, a marine aquarium and many other museums worthy of visiting.
You can see several things hurriedly or can take days to really study the variety of landmark views that are available to see. Under the Harbor Bridge , there are two ships that I would like to mention as they are historic treasures. The Lexington is a WWII Aircraft Carrier that serves as a museum for those who have never been on a large ship. Nearby was the replica of the Columbus ship with many parts to take in.
The largest and most obvious would be the Harbor Bay Bridge and the Lexington which is nearby. While we were there, we visited a replica ship of Columbus and saw how difficult it must have been to spend weeks and months aboard these sea crafts.
The Columbus replica ship sits just under the Harbor Bridge and they make a beautiful sight.
We were very impressed with the Texas State Aquarium and the Museum of Science and History.
Little known to us was that there are number of historical homes in the area. We visited some and looked at others as we passed by.
The French-Galvan House is a two-story structure with a wraparound gallery on each floor.
We just drove by to take a look at this historical house. This structure was built at 1101 North Chaparral for Simon and Lila Belle (Solomon) Guggenheim. Simon Guggenheim (1861-1942) was a native Texan who came to Corpus Christi in 1882 with forty dollars in his pocket and remained to become wealthy. He and a friend formed the Guggenheim and Cohn Dry Goods Co. In 1891, the year of his marriage, he acquired a great deal of property when he helped rescue the city’s economy during a recession in 1896, and later was a successful investor in the petroleum industry. The Guggenheim’s had this house built about 1900. They moved into a modest apartment and sold their home in 1924. Among their philanthropies was a gift of four lots on South Broadway as the site for a YMCA building, where Guggenheim’s portrait was hung. Their Victorian house of the early 1900s was moved to its present site during a period of city growth.
The turret on this house survived all others in the domestic architecture of the city. The builder adorned the house with bay windows; a lunette in the front pediment; and gables faced with shingles; ornamenting the porches with columns, brackets, and banisters, and with cornices displaying wooden beads, spindles, lattices, and other Victorian gingerbread.