Former Site of Heidenheimer's Castle

John Seabrook Sydnor reached Galveston in January 1840 aboard the Austin, bringing a house framed in Virginia and shipped in sections. He was mayor in 1846 and 1847, and he built a brick wharf and warehouse. Through the 1850s he was also a slave dealer, selling people at public auction at his establishment on the Strand. Later he was commissioned a Confederate colonel, resigned, and went into the auction and commission business in Houston. He moved to New York in 1866 and died in 1869 at Lynchburg, Texas. He is buried in Galveston's Oleander Cemetery.

What the plaque says

Former Site of Heidenheimer's Castle In 1857 John S. Sydnor (1812-1869), former Galveston mayor, built the original two-story, eight-room structure at this site. Samson Heidenheimer (1834-1891) bought it in 1884. The German-born Heidenheimer began with a $100 loan and built a fortune as a Confederate blockade runner. He was associated with Sydnor and his son Seabrook in an auction business. Heidenheimer enlarged the house to four stories and 37 room and added castle-like tower and turrets. It changed owners many times after his death; burned in 1973, and was razed in 1975. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 1892 Bishop's Palace — steps away
  Nicholas Clayton's stone house on Broadway for the railroad lawyer Walter Gresham, later home to Galveston's Catholic bishops and one of the most admired Victorian houses in the country.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 0.6 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• The Strand — 0.6 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 0.7 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.

More markers nearby

• St. Paul United Methodist Church — steps away
• The Rt. Rev. Monsignor Marius Etienne Chataignon — steps away
• Site of Galveston Seminary — 0.2 mi
• George Washington Chapter - DAR — 0.3 mi