DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll let the house do most of the talkin'. Now, if you want to understand Galveston at the turn of the last century — the ambition of it, the elegance of it — you could do a lot worse than stop and look at the Maud Moller House. The place went up sometime in the mid-1890s.
Late Victorian, through and through. And from about 1895 until 1911, it belonged to Maud J. H.
Moller. She and her husband Jens weren't exactly wallflowers. The Mollers moved in Galveston's business and political circles — prominent, the marker says, and that word carries weight in a city that was once the commercial crown of Texas.
But here's where it gets interesting. Even while Maud held title to the home, the man living under that roof from 1898 to 1910 was one Ulrich Muller. Cotton exporter.
And — hold on now — Swiss Consul. On one address in Galveston, you had the threads of international commerce and diplomatic standing pulled tight together. Cotton moving out into the world, and a consul keeping watch over it all from behind those Queen Anne columns.
And those columns are worth your attention. So is the curving stairway up to the porch, and the corner pavilion anchoring the whole composition like a full stop at the end of a very confident sentence. This wasn't a house built to be overlooked.
And a century later, standing right there in Galveston, it still isn't.
What the marker says
Built in the mid-1890s, this late Victorian home was owned by Maud J. H. Moller from about 1895 until 1911. She and her husband, Jens, were prominent in Galveston business and political circles. Cotton exporter and Swiss Consul Ulrich Muller resided in the home from 1898 to 1910. Interesting features of the home include the curving stairway to the porch, the Queen Anne columns, and the corner pavilion. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983